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18 The PCB Design Magazine • September 2014 • Excellon needs no improvement; it defines the location and diameter of drilled holes quite well. • Component placement lists can define component positions and rotations quite well also • PDF is a good format for rendering drawings • GenCAD and FATF are good for defining the parts of a PCB assembly for testing purposes • Word is good for capturing text, especially "Readme" documents that explain to a CAM engineer how all of the above file-types should relate to each other, and how to reintegrate all that data back together so as to enable an efficient software-driven new product introduction (NPI) process. Certainly, if all you want is accurate graphi- cal data, then I am sure Gerber meets the re- quirement, and Karel is to be congratulated on his perseverence in improving that particular 50-year-old NC format. At a recent industry de- bate on this topic, he suggested that the best THE GREAT GERBER VS. ODB++ DEBATE continues feature Figure 1: The column on the right can be achieved at low cost, without breaking workflows, in an upwardly compatible way.