Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1532278
28 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I FEBRUARY 2025 the file so that line widths would match the intent, but that was it. Once the artwork film was photo-plotted, the CAM data's job was over. Back then, the order was most likely pro- duced with a FIRE 9000 laser that was state-of- the-art at the time. In a day or two, we'd get a phone call from our purchasing department informing us that our photoplotted order was ready. We felt dou- bly important if we were selected to drive the company car over to pick it up and then drop the artwork film positives and negatives off at the nearby PCB prototyping shop. ese were our normal work- flows. No netlist data or connec- tivity report. No drill file output. In fact, once a PCB prototype shop got the artwork film in hand, it would be photo-graphically replicated multiple times onto glass panels to form the work- ing phototooling. e through- holes were drilled by machine but "bomb-sighted" for position by a technician. In a week or two, our PCB prototypes—printed, etched and plated using the artwork as the master tooling—were again ready to be picked up by a young PCB designer. Fast Forward Now it's 2025. I recently attended DesignCon 2025, where I saw technology I could have never imagined in 1980. We engaged with electronics engineers who presented ses- sions on electronic sensors for future high energy par- ticle colliders, artificial intel- ligence computing, and global connectivity with low-Earth orbit satellite technology. We met with technology compa- nies that I recognized from my early years in the industry, many of whom still specialize in CAD, test- ing and interconnectivity. ese companies started business long ago, but they adapted and evolved. ey've successfully navigated the political and economic challenges of the past five decades and are now actively supply- ing better products and services today. We boomers sometimes laugh at how green we must have appeared to the older genera- tion of design engineers who had begun their careers in the postwar years. Aer the advent of EDA tools, the old-school designers thought A business card for Advanced Circuit Graphics. How many California PCB designers used them for photoplotting? A photoplotted film layer from one of my first CAD designs in 1980. You could build a condo in all that extra real estate.