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Altium Releases Service Pack 2 for P-CAD(R) 2004

P-CAD Design System Powered With Over 130 Features and Enhancements in Service Pack 2
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 05/25/2005 -- Altium Limited (ASX: ALU), a leading developer of Windows-based electronics design software, today announced the release of Service Pack 2 for P-CAD® 2004, Altium's PCB design system for layout professionals. Service Pack 2 (SP2) is a substantial upgrade, with over 130 new features and enhancements designed to give users greater power and control over the PCB design process. It is available as a free download to all existing P-CAD 2004 customers.

SP2 includes productivity enhancements such as Variants, which can now be defined in both schematic and PCB with full ECO support in both directions. Variants can be created and edited by renaming, modifying the description, adding or removing components, and modifying the attributes of components to be placed with the Variant. SP2 also includes the ability to run multiple instances of all P-CAD applications -- PCB, Schematic, and Library Manager/Executive. Furthermore, SP2 provides backwards compatibility support that facilitates staggered upgrades within companies and more trouble-free interaction between internal and external organizations. Efficiency has been greatly improved with layer ordering for printing, and SP2 includes important improvements to copper pours. SP2 also comes with increased routing power due to improvements to glossing and hugging performance and the Specctra/Situs™ Exporter.

In addition, enhancements were made to P-CAD 2004 Bonus Technologies, including Altium Designer's Situs™ Topological Autorouter, which now recognizes and utilizes class-to-class rules provided by P-CAD and handles P-CAD layer names with spaces in them. Clearance rules are now interpreted correctly, with pad and via rules broken out into separate rules when necessary. Free Pads are no longer converted to vias. There is support for pad styles with zero height and width on top and bottom layers, layer rules from P-CAD, and pre-routed fanouts in components. Split plane nets are now also handled and assigned correctly.

"Service Pack 2 is a significant upgrade for our loyal P-CAD customers," said Nick Martin, founder and CEO, Altium. "We listened closely to the P-CAD community, addressed their issues, and are excited to make this Service Pack available today."

SP2 key features at a glance

-- Backward compatibility support
-- Integrated and enhanced Variants
-- Improvements to Specctra/Situs™ exporter including translating
tools
-- Improved glossing and hugging performance for Advanced Route tool
-- Copper pour improvements
-- Advanced Route tool expanded
-- Improvements to P-CAD's Bonus Technologies featuring Altium Designer's
Situs Topological Autorouter
-- Ability to run multiple instances of P-CAD applications
-- Printer Setup in File Print dialog
-- Layer stackup improvements
-- Enhanced layer ordering in print
-- Support for drill table decimal precision

For a full list of new features and enhancements in SP2, go to http://www.altium.com/pcad/resources/downloads/spDownloads/.
Pricing and availability

SP2 is available free of charge for immediate download to all licensed P-CAD 2004 customers from http://www.altium.com/pcad/resources/downloads/spDownloads/.

P-CAD 2004 full suite new licenses are priced at US$9,995. Upgrade pricing for the full suite starts at US$2,995 for P-CAD 2002 users. Other configurations are available from US$1,695.

P-CAD 2004 also comes with Bonus Technologies that bring additional power and efficiency to the design process. For more product information, visit www.altium.com/pcad/ or contact your local Altium Sales and Support Center.

About Altium Limited

Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) is a global developer and supplier of electronics design software for the Microsoft Windows environment. Founded in 1985, Altium released the world's first Microsoft Windows-based printed circuit board design tool in 1991, and continues to provide advanced, easy-to-use and affordable software design tools for complete electronic product development to electronics engineers, designers, and developers worldwide. Altium is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, and has sales and support offices in Australia, the United States, Japan, Europe and China. For more information, please visit www.altium.com.

Altium, Altium Designer, CAMtastic, CircuitStudio, Design Explorer, DXP, LiveDesign, NanoBoard, NanoTalk, Nexar, nVisage, P-CAD, Protel, Situs, TASKING, and Topological Autorouting and their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Altium Limited or its subsidiaries. All other registered or unregistered trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners, and no trademark rights to the same are claimed.

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Altium USA Media Contact

Sarah Seifert
Edelman
800 West El Camino Real Ste. 400
Mountain View, CA 94040
USA
www.edelman.com
Telephone: +1 650 968 4033
Fax: +1 650 968 2201
Email: sarah.seifert@edelman.com

Corporate Media Contact

Bernadette Rose
Altium Limited
Level 3, 12a Rodborough Road
Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086
Australia
www.altium.com
Telephone: +61 2 9975 7710
Fax: +61 2 9975 7720
Email: Bernadette.rose@altium.com.au

SOURCE: Altium

Hitachi Software Engineering to Release Micro-well Array Chip-based Scanning System for Cell Analysis

Tokyo (JCN) - Hitachi Software Engineering (HitachiSoft) (TSE: 9694) announced on July 5 that it will begin marketing its newly-developed scanning system designed for cell analysis this month. Using a micro-well array chip developed by Toyama Medical-Bio Cluster, the new product can detect antigen-specific lymphocytes with high throughput and reproducibility.

Compared with the conventional method, this system can analyze cell responses comprehensively, contributing to the development of antibody drugs.

In collaboration with Toyama-based pharmaceutical company SC World, HitachiSoft will distribute the new system bundled with microwell array chips. The system sells for 15,000,000 yen ($136,000) and a chip for 25,000 yen ($227).

HitachiSoft aims for annual sales of more than 1 billion yen ($9.0 mil) in its microwell array-related business.

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