Ross is absolutely correct when he says that we will continue to have
     problems in the future. In my mind (purely my OPINION) 5the only thing
     that will bring D-35X into common use would be a compelling reason
     from users. I am finally convinced that there is not an EDA conspiracy
     to kill D-350. The EDA developers will support something when the
     users demand it. Untill users have a compelling reason to use a
     format/standard there is no reason to support it. All fabricators and
     manufacturers DO NOT support D-350. The few that do and have offered
     discounts on tooling for D-350 have not done enough to make the user
     community aware of this. It has been a very haphazard effort.
     Gerber became a "standard" because board shops promoted the cost and
     time advantages (to the customer) of Gerber files, and because they
     (board shops) began to demand files over films.
     Gary is absolutly right when he states that EDIF is not adequate for
     manufacturing - at this point. EDIF 4 0 0 contains electrical and
     component data but is weak in manufaturing data. I've heard that the
     IPC and EDIF are trying to work together to establish a data format,
     but with all due respect to Gary the IPC and the volunteer committees,
     volunteer committees by their very nature take an inordinate amount of
     time to get things going. The true answer (again my opinion) is one
     that will involve pain and dedication from the user community - but
     that's a topic for other venues.

     Pete Waddell


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________

Subject: DES- Gerber formats?
Author:  [log in to unmask] at Internet
Date:    11/4/96 8:02 PM


On  4 Nov 96 at 12:33, Gary Ferrari wrote:

 >Ross La Gue,
 >
 >I would like to comment on a couple of issues you make. First, all
 >of the bare board electrical test manufacturers support IPC-D-356.
 >As a matter of fact, they are the ones that wrote to specification,
 >and are responsible to keep it current. There are no plans, nor a
 >desire to support a standard such as EDIF, since it does not support
 >the manufacture of bare boards. What little support it has is
 >inadequate.
 >


 My original comment to the Technet forum was that I didn't expect
a groundswell of support for IPC-D-356. None of the PC based CAD
packages I have used support it.  Most have EDIF support.  Also, I
originally commented that the netlist problem was a big problem.
That comment was made in the context of a discussion on SMT pads
drawn with RS-274-X macros.
 In order to solve this problem we require the cooperation of the
EDA industry as well as the board manufacturers and testers. I'm
sorry if my reply isn't politically correct enough for you, but
the IPC standard isn't worth a hill of beans if we all can't agree
to use it.
 If the bare board electrical test manufacturers are not willing
to support EDIF and the EDA vendors are not willing to pay to support
IPC-D-356, then we will still be having a big problem in the future.
in fact, if I recall, this same discussion several years ago in
the pages of _Printed Circuit Design_ mag.

---
Ross LaGue          < [log in to unmask] >          Dayton, Ohio

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