Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1163814
SEPTEMBER 2019 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 25 they are not. But to gain access to the meta-in- formation they contain, you must adopt them wholesale, and that includes a new image for- mat. The problem is that image formats are no- toriously hard to implement. Much has been written about just how com- plicated geometric software is and how much effort it takes to get it right, not to mention the years it takes to debug. And that is a big con- sideration for anyone thinking about adopting a new format. Errors in image transfer are cat- astrophic as they inevitably lead to scrap. Ger- ber's image functionality has been thoroughly tried, tested, and debugged over many years, which is why the global PCB industry knows that its PCB data is safe with Gerber. Can the same be said of IPC-2581? How many jobs does this format have under its belt? It's also worth noting here that a huge por- tion of PCB software is developed by tiny com- panies, often one-person outfits. For larger companies, implementing ODB++ (let alone IPC-2581) is already difficult enough, but for these smaller companies, it's a massive—and often prohibitive—undertaking. Compare this with the ease and simplicity of adding attri - butes to an existing Gerber implementation. Gerber X2 offers developers a straightfor- ward, affordable, effortless way to add "intel- ligence" to their input/output, allowing com- panies of all sizes to participate in the growth and advancement of the global PCB industry. Similarly, it's very easy for designers and fab- ricators to implement Gerber X2 as it's com- patible with X1, so if the software being used cannot handle X2's new meta-information, it can just skip it and continue to work as be- fore. Easy. So, why does the PCB industry still use Ger- ber? Because it is the very best PCB data format out there. Gerber offers our industry a standard with a great image specification that is trust- worthy and easy to implement and use, and it has evolved over the years as intelligence has been added to the image data. Ucamco is ded- icated to excellence—its own, that of its cus- tomers, and that of the industry. DESIGN007 References 1. Visit the Reference Gerber Viewer and download a sample job here. Karel Tavernier is managing director of Ucamco. Figure 2: A QED report generated from a Gerber job shows detailed DFM data.