Siemens raises Capital to full E/E design level

Siemens has unveiled further extensions and integration for its Capital software suite for full electrical/electronic (E/E) systems and software design, with major features for embedded software and network communications.

Capital joined Siemens Digital Industries Software as a result of its acquisition of Mentor and has gradually been integrated with other Siemens tools and platforms, notably Teamcenter and Xcelerator.

The new capabilities (summarized in Figure 1) address various burgeoning design challenges. The number of software lines in an automotive project today has risen to 150 million and in an aerospace project to 300 million. The comparative complexity for network signals is 20,000 for automotive and 100,000 for aerospace.

Separately, research by Engineering.com has pointed to increased integration between the MCAD and ECAD domains reducing time-to-market by between 10% and 25%.

Figure 1. Capital now traverses E/E and embedded software tasks and project definition up to the architectural level (Siemens – click to enlarge)

As is common with this kind of major extension and integration, achieving a ‘shift left’ is an important component, largely exploiting a model-based strategy. Capital started out as a tool for harness design, but in its new incarnation stretches up to the architectural design and specification of E/E systems, as well as the capture and transfer of consistent data across multiple steps in the flow. Capital has also been progressively extended to address remote working as well as interdisciplinary collaboration.

Siemens then sees these capabilities feed into a consistent “digital thread” that feeds into its concept of the digital twin at the heart of the Xcelerator platform.