Hello,

my company recently asked me to look into procuring some software to do thermal analysis of our PCB designs. I am primarily concerned with calculating junction temperatures of the boards, but would eventually like to get into heat dissipation and stress analysis of the complete system. Two packages that caught my eye were FloTherm and FloTherm.pcb, but they are prohibitively expensive. We cannot justify the cost due to the limited volume we produce. So what alternatives are there? Has anyone bought a second-hand or OEM license of an older version? Is there similar software I could use that costs less than five grand? Thanks in advance for your help.

check these two 1- http://www.ansys.com/products/icepak...lt.asp?name=p1 2- http://www.pcanalyze.com/

Thank you for the response. Both of these options deserve consideration, I am checking out the PCAnalyze demo right now.

Alright, I have spent some time with PCAnalyze, and I do like how easy it is to use. However, the fact that the software solves models using the finite difference method, coupled with a limited amount of nodes (50x50 mesh maximum) makes me wonder whether the software has enough resolution to give an accurate solution. I would like Ansys's Icepak (or Iceboard) but it is likely out of our price range (<$5000). Anybody have any more suggestions? Thanks again,

Dave