Converting a custom CAD program over to a standard.

We have a major CAD program that does Electrical, Electronic, Panels, cabinets, wire bundles, circuit boards and prints..

This program is an in house app and was created in the days of Windows 3.x and has advanced, of course.

Some conversion programs have been written to make the files some what compatible when shipping off circuit boards for fabing...

what is going on now is, every one wants to use tools that the world is using. We are now dealing with a lot of people that are not directly linked with us...

I was the original developer of this tool, I am now the last one and it has been release to me to do as I please with it..

Is there a PDF file or some kind of guide line published out there that can give me the terms used in the editing of items so that I can match these. Also, items like defining line width, scaling, through holes in circuit boards, file formats expected etc....

I have used several programs over the years from various authors and have collected some basic commonality between them...

I guess what I am after is mostly the circuit board lay out file formats, Node routing formats, schematic file formats and routing formats for those also..

I really don't think every one uses AutoCad/AutoDesk with DWG files etc... I do have some gerber translations but those are part of the external converter programs which I plan to integrate into the package.

Any nice listing of what is expected and how to manipulate the tool for circuits and circuit board designing would be nice...

The most tool I have used other than our own for circuits is Eagle how ever, there are things that I kind of curl my eyebrow on there.

I plan in releasing this as a cheap all around CAD tool.

This package was once release to me in the past and when I started to change things around in it, they decided to keep it longer because they liked what I was doing in it. This time, I have it in writing!!!!!!!!!

Reply to
Jamie
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sounds like you need the latest in gerber file definition rs-274x and the description for ipc-365 files. this should get you circuit boards at least. having a schematic to board checker would be a plus. i have not the slightest idea what to do for cable bundles. regards, al

Reply to
mickgeyver

mickgeyver wrote:

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"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"

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Reply to
Jamie

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from memory, the most used around here are OrCAD, PCPads, and Allegro

Everytime we sent a new board to PCB Fab houses, they would ALWAYS check the gerbers. They said that often there would be inconsistencies they would manually change, usually at no additional cost. They considered this checking/modification just to be part of doing business.

Made me wonder if the gerber standard was indeed a standard, or just guidelines.

If you could have your program 'learn' the manufacturing rules [based upon their specs *and* upon your experiences from using them] for any specific PCB fab house, that would be incredible! It would be nice to have the rules adjusted for which house we would like to use. We have super cheap houses, but not so good at better than gross tolerances and then we have some medium priced and higher priced down to incredibly tight tolerance, and even have capability to laser trim. Plus, each house has different 'rules' for vias, too. some like certain pad sizes surrounding certain hole sizes, some can easily make tiny vias, just depends.

I would like to have a library of rules that relate to each potential vendor that can be applied to the layout. I know the houses try to be uniform, but that just doesn't quite happen. Historically, as we use vendors and boards come back, we throw away the experiences learned, only because there has been no place to keep the knowledge. We can only keep a gross level of experience [pass/fail] and lose a potential edge to be able to move faster.

thoughts?

Reply to
Robert Macy

Are there _conflicting_ versions of Gerber in play? I don't think so. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

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That would be good. Not sure how catastrophic the 'nonstandard' causes, but one example I saw was some form of 'overlay' with information from different layers getting mushed together, with resulting metallization that was just garbage.

I'm just relating what I've been told by several fab houses. They also said all this rework is done at every house and customers usually don't ask, like I did, so they don't show it to them. I got the feeling that each house thought they were doing something wrong, had to make corrections for their 'error', and therefore kept the requirement for modifications a secret from the customers - made them look bad. Out of sight, out of mind. They always presented to the customer the attitude of 'send us your gerber and we make you a perfect PCB'.

Reply to
Robert Macy

One nice thing about

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is their auto-DFM service. You send in your gerbers, and they will do an automatic DFM check and TELL you what changes they will make automatically, as well as problems that they found. Had been invaluable as I have been learning the reality vs. the theory of PCB layout. It has several times warned me when a footprint's solder mask wasn't correctly spec'd!

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie E.

I don't do layout, so my experience with GDSII is strictly as a viewer. I do know that you need a layers "map" separately to set up your viewer. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

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I use gerber magic for viewing

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allows pretty good tools for viewing.

Reply to
Robert Macy

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Don't forget the Excelon drill file. Nobody else mentioned it. And yes, there are many slight "flavorings" of rs-274x, most, maybe=20 all, popular EDA / PCB vendors have slight variations, but none dare=20 vary more than slightly. DRC (design rule checking) is usually = considered=20 to be quite valuable, especially if you can specify relative generic=20 sets of rules.

Reply to
JosephKK

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