Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1040234
OCTOBER 2018 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 13 ers with many years of experience in my career that have bad habits. Bad habits are major contributors to bad data being supplied to the fabricator. I know from experience and from discussions with my fellow IPC CIT instructors that there are seasoned veterans with many years of experience and complex designs under their belt who fail the IPC CID or CID+ certi- fication courses. These senior designers tend to get caught up in their own world, or worse, become legends in their own mind. They think they know everything and don't continue their professional development. Over time, the fab- ricator bails them out by catching their mis- takes from the feedback of the CAM engineers, as you mentioned. Shaughnessy: I'll often ask designers if they regularly speak with their fabricators, and a lot of them say they never do because they don't know who's going to build it. They don't know who will do the prototypes or build production volumes overseas. Instead, they output in Gerber and Valor—so they're fairly safe—and then they wait for the call about what's wrong. Chavez: You're absolutely right, when it comes to many companies and how they procure boards. Sometimes you don't know who is building your board. Generally, if you follow IPC standards, you'll minimize your overall risk. You should design your PWBs per IPC standards at a minimum, then no matter where it's fabricated or who is fabricating it, you will have success. When you start deviating from IPC standards, negative issues begin to present themselves. This is why communication is key. To achieve overall success and make revision one work, you should design your board per IPC standards at a minimum. If you do this, your designs will have a much lower risk going into fabrication, and you'll end up with a posi- tive result. I'm flabbergasted as to why many design- ers don't pick up the phone and call their sup- plier. You and your supplier should be on a first-name basis. You don't want to guess in this game. Recently, I've done some research on out- puts regarding data formats. Which output should be the primary output for suppliers— Gerber along with IPC-D-356 netlist, ODB++, Figure 1: The "Designers Triangle."