Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1417991
OCTOBER 2021 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 37 format to communicate between the fabrica- tor and design center. If I send a board to a fabricator, they will send back a series of technical queries (TQs). ey may have questions about something in the data. "We found an error on the board. ey sent it to me in one format. If I go to another company to fabricate my board, they send that information in a different format." So now, one's a PDF, one's in Excel, and you have to go through all this and figure out what's what. In 2581, we're standardizing that format, so why send a TQ? Not only do I have it from all my vendors who are using 2581 so I have one reader to look at all this stuff, but I'll be able to have links that go directly to the database and point to the exact location. Shaughnessy: I think getting 2581 integrating with CFX has been a really big step forward. How does that work? Acheson: As I mentioned earlier, there's this thing called a function mode in 2581. One of the concerns of our customers is, "How do I protect my IP? I don't want to send my whole database to the fabricator in one area, my assembly to someone else, and they get all the data." ey can use one of our function modes that says, "I'm going to a fabricator." You select bare board manufacturing and it outputs just the data for that. It eliminates the building materials for components and so forth. One of those pieces for the assembly side could be extracted or will be extracted for the CFX portion. Now they know all the information related to assembly. ey have the bill of materials with them, they have the component placement, the ori- entation, any of the other key factors that may be attached to it, whether it has multiple man- ufacturing part numbers or what have you. en, it has some basic description of the com- ponent itself where the pins and components lie, and the height. en, they can extract that information for the machine work and they can create their CFX packets and everything about each board based on the data contained within the original database. Let's go from start to finish. I develop my design, output the data in 2581, and I can tar- get it to whatever functionality I want it to. en, as it goes through the process, and ques- tions and problems occur, I've got that 2581 format that I can send it back to. I can review the issue rather quickly, send that information back with all the answers, and they can con- tinue with the process. I'll have a history of it through the whole cycle. Johnson: at's a pretty powerful thing, but I also recall you saying earlier that this is an XML format. How do you secure the data? Acheson: It's a lot like how you would protect data today with anything else. It's between you and the fabricator, or the contract manufac- turer, with a secure link. We bounced around putting security built into XML, but when you say, "I'm going to do this," because it's an open format, you must publicize it. ere goes your security because everybody in the world knows how to do it. We've consciously made the deci- sion not to embed that, but it becomes an agree- ment between you, whoever you're contracting with, and how that encryption would occur. Johnson: Your security is not in the file; your security is in the channel? Acheson: Correct. 2581 is being looked at as a digital twin of the physical board. So, the data for physical boards is based on what's in 2581.