Return to
Products 
SCAT, an acronym for Sneak Circuit Analysis Tool, is a new PC based program for identifying signal paths which may inhibit desired functions or cause undesired outputs in electrical circuits. These signal paths are sometimes referred to as "sneak paths" since they often go undetected by the electrical designer unless lengthy analyses aimed at their discovery are carried out. SCAT is tightly integrated with the Windows version of CapFast PC DesignMaster schematic capture package. It thus shares CapFast DesignMaster's highly intuitive user interface and displays sneak paths as boldly highlighted interconnections in CapFast schematics.
Conventional techniques for finding sneak paths require the generation (usually automated) and analysis (mostly manual) of network trees. This is time consuming and increasingly error prone activity, especially when electrical designs grow in complexity. SCAT, however, does not require network trees, making it particularly useful early in the design process when data for constructing network trees is sketchy or unavailable. The automated approach used by SCAT is based on the fact that sneak paths involve circuit components which can conduct current in either direction depending upon the switching state of the circuit. The program exhaustively searches for these bidirectional branches rather than performing the more complex task of searching for specific topological patterns. The analyst is thus spared the task of applying "clue lists: to circuit patterns in order to identify sneak paths, and may devote more time to evaluating the significance of the potential sneak paths revealed by SCAT.
SCAT also includes a built-in expert system that anlayzes a design with respect to specific concerns chosen by the user, presenting warnings and possible solutions to any problems it encounters. The program allows the design engineer or reliability analyst to focus on just the portions of a circuit over which he or she has responsiblity - a circuit card assembly or power distribution subsystem, for example.
CapFast/SCAT can perform both sneak circuit and design concerns analysis with a single command. A session log, which automatically keeps track of all actions taken by the user as analyses progress, is stored for future reference and can be printed out as supporting documentation. The user can also easily alter parameters and rerun a previous analysis.
CapFast/SCAT Technical Paper (authored by Phase Three Logic Staff)
Return to
Products