Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1417991
OCTOBER 2021 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 35 There's a good chance for human error if someone is not paying attention to the database accuracies and so forth. Acheson: For users of a lot of the tools, and I can speak on Cadence Allegro and OrCAD, it is a simple process. You still go through the typi- cal steps of saying, "Here are my layer struc- tures, this is what makes the top layer, and this is what makes the bottom layer." But when I go to output the data, I simply select where I want the file to be saved, what function mode I want, I hit my generate button, and the file is done. Feinberg: Ed, I have a question about IPC-2581 being an open format. You can use it without paying IPC anything, but what happens with the soware? Let's say you create something that's really unique and valuable. Do you own it, or is it then open for anyone else? Acheson: If you create the soware, it's up to you if you want to give it away or sell it. Feinberg: Do you have unique rights to it? Acheson: Yes. Feinberg: Anything you've got rights to, you can assign the right to others or open it up. But I just wanted to know that if you came up with something great for it that works with an open- source standard, you own it. at's important, I think. Acheson: Yes. Happy Holden: In your opinion, why does everyone continue to use Gerber? Is it because they've always done it that way, or they don't want to learn about 2581? Do they have false impressions that it's too complicated or costly? Acheson: I think the most conservative people in the world are board designers. If you're going to make a change, what the heck's going to happen if I make this change downstream of my process? If it's not broken, why should I fix it? e realization of where problems may lie is here: If I create an artwork and my origin for my artwork is a lower-le corner of the board, now I create an NC drill file. e origin for that is the tooling hole in the upper right corner of the board. I bring that into a CAM system and now I must align those files. ere's a good chance for human error if someone is not pay- ing attention to the database accuracies and so forth. So, you can create some issues down that process. What does that mean to have a single source file with all that data contained within it? It means you've got the same origin source, the same database units, and the same level of accuracy. e other part of being slow to adopt is the fabricators. ey're limited to the num- ber of tools that they have, and the time to read the 2581 data. ey're charged for the adapters to do that, so there's a cost factor for the fabri- cators. For a lot of them, they've written decades of scripts around their hand tools, and to intro- duce a new format to them means more work without realizing that it's really not a lot more work. So, they hesitate. It's easier for them to say, "No, we don't support it." What has been and must happen is that larger corporations are now understanding both how adaptive and reliable IPC-2581 is to their environment. ey are now telling fabricators, "By such and such date, the only information you're going to get from us is 2581. If you don't adapt, we're going to go somewhere else." Now we're starting to see a trend in the fabrication side of adopting it, so they can maintain their customer database.