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26 The PCB Design Magazine • September 2014 Several design bureaus within the consor- tium ran their own internal tests to validate IPC-2581 output from their ECAD tools. They partnered with their ECAD and manufacturing partners to resolve any issues that came up dur- ing their validation process. Often design bu- reaus would compare traditional outputs (Ger- ber, ODB++) with IPC-2581 data. Cisco Systems reported that they are evaluating 51 current pro- duction designs of various technologies. They also reported excellent support and collabora- tion between their ECAD and manufacturing partners and are in the process of updating their internal stack-up generator tool to support 2581 input and output. This industry-wide collaboration led to the fastest revision of a standard in IPC history. The consortium, in partnership with IPC, developed IPC-2581 revision B in 12–14 months, from identifying the list of changes needed to send- ing the specifications out for ballot approval by IPC members. Revision B of IPC-2581 Enhancements in- clude: • Assembly data: Library pin 1 orientation, primary pin tag, pickup point for components, polarity markings. Library orientation data pro- vides the assembly process a key to zero orien- tation of device in the design relative to zero orientation of assembly equipment. The orien- tation options are based on the different library standards across the globe. The "Pin one" attribute identifies the pri- mary pin of a package to identify the key pin for placement verification and other processes with the fabrication, assembly and test process- es. Various optical inspection tools for assembly verification can use an attribute associated with graphical object, such as the "+" polarity mark- ing in silkscreen or copper. • Bill of material (BOM) updates include: Enterprise data (person, role, design revi- sion, history, software etc), instance-based footprint reference, variant design support and enhancements to stack-up definitions. The enterprise data embedded into the IPC-2581 file contain contact information, BOM revision data, board revision data and feature IPC-2581 ADOPTION UPDATE continues Figure 1: Corporate members of the IPC-2581 Consortium.