SINGAPORE--(Marketwired - Jul 23, 2015) - RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE: ECM), the global distributor for engineers, today announced it has exclusive distributor access to the SamacSys ECAD Part Wizard (EPW) and a wide range of high-quality ready-to-use electronic component ECAD models. The models support all popular ECAD tool formats, including the RS DesignSpark PCB software, and are available for download along with the EPW application completely free of charge via the DesignSpark website.

In conjunction with SamacSys, RS is working closely with leading component manufacturers to provide accurate and high-quality ECAD models that offer schematic symbol and PCB footprint information for electronic parts. This delivers significant advantages for electronic design engineers including rapid design-in, fewer PCB errors and significant time savings, resulting in improved user experience and a shorter time-to-market.

Importantly, the ECAD Part Wizard provides design engineers with full control of the schematic symbol fracturing process. This includes the number of fractures to be created, the placement of pins around the sides of each fracture (left, right, top and bottom), and the order in which each pin is displayed. In addition, EPW provides PCB-layout component footprints, all of which are IPC compliant with user-selectable least, nominal and maximum footprint options.

These new ECAD models are available to download via the RS website, directly from within the EPW tool or from the RS Product Data Library (PDL) and have been created to help engineers with their rapid prototyping design process. Currently the PDL holds more than two million part numbers from more than 500 manufacturers with five million individual pieces of technical documentation and computer aided engineering files to support engineers in the design process. In addition, DesignSpark users can request the prompt creation of a specific component model if it is not already available in the library.

"DesignSpark is an online community from RS which offers valuable information and resources including major free-to-download tools such as DesignSpark PCB," said Alex MacDougall, Managing Director at SamacSys. "The addition of the SamacSys ECAD Part Wizard and ECAD models into the RS Product Data Library recognises that these tools can deliver major productivity gains to design engineers and help speed up the design and prototyping process."

"The completely free availability of the SamacSys EPW and this wide range of ECAD models can be a significant aid to engineers," said Glenn Jarrett, Global Head of Product Marketing at RS Components. "It enables designers to spend more time on innovation in their projects rather than wasting valuable resources by having to enter component data to build up ECAD tool libraries. In addition, they are assured that data errors are not introduced into the process."