Pickering Interfaces releases updated versions of its signal routing software, Switch Path Manager

Pickering Interfaces, a leading provider of modular signal switching and simulation solutions for electronic test and verification, today introduced version 6 of their signal routing software, Switch Path Manager (SPM), with a range of new capabilities as well as a new "lite" version.

This signal routing software simplifies signal routing through complex switching systems and speeds up the development of switching system software.

- The software evaluation period is now 14 days, but the time is based on the number of days the software is actually used rather than a fixed period of time; users are now able to fully evaluate the software as their schedule allows.

- The addition of Switch Path Manager Lite, a low-cost solution that is fully functional but with an operational limitation of two active switching modules in the configuration. Larger configurations with more than two modules can be created, loaded and edited—but not executed. In contrast to the SPM full license, SPM Lite is not connected to a dedicated computer, once purchased it can be used as a site license.

In addition to the major updates above, there is also a range of new capabilities including:

- An enhanced System Configurator Editor which gives the user the ability to apply standard functionality like copy, paste, delete, find, replace and cell manipulation. It also offers better filtering technology to filter dedicated pins, and it now has added display options, so the user can decide what will be displayed in the configurator.

- Introduction of Multipoint Routes—in the past, if a user wanted to create fixed routes for multipoints (e.g., A connect to B & C), two single routes (A-B, B-C) had to be created and combined into groups—this is now possible in one step.

- A new and very effective API function has been added: IsConnectedStatus (EndpointA, EndpointB). With only one simple function call, a user can find out whether given endpoints have been connected by SPM. This functionality is important when a route uses multiple relays, and on that route, there are more endpoints connected to each other than a user is thinking of. Example: A and B have been connected, but C is on the route and connected as well. It is not obvious the user would know about the route A-C-B unless you call IsConnectedStatus()