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September 2014 • The PCB Design Magazine 15 If these are the benefits of ODB++ and the reasons for adopting it, then Coates' argument collapses. More importantly, Coates omits to mention the difficulties in adopting ODB++. Over the 20 years that ODB++ has been available, it has ta- ken just 10% of the market share, with Gerber accounting for the remaining 90%. If ODB++ offers all the advantages espoused by Coates in his article, there can only be one of two reasons for its minimal uptake: • The PCB industry consists largely of morons • There are downsides to using ODB++ As I do not think this great industry is in the hands of morons, I believe that there must be some serious downsides to the adoption of ODB++. This is not because ODB++ is a particu- larly bad format: It is not. The point is that the adoption of ODB++ includes the adoption of a new image format, and image formats are no- toriously hard to implement. Much has been written about just how complicated geometric software is and how much effort it takes to get it right, not to mention the years it takes to de- bug. So the implication that taking on this new image format is simple and low risk is at the very least misleading. Precisely because our industry's practitioners are not morons, they know this, so are reluctant to adopt a new format. They know very well how complex ODB++ is, and that it will give rise to many more problems, for many years. The reality is that Gerber works very well for transferring images. In fact, there's nothing better. Gerber X2 The most interesting point made by Coa- tes is that Gerber files contain "no information about how the PCB layers stack up." This was a valid objection in the past, but it is no lon- ger true, as the latest revision, Gerber X2, now contains layer stackup information. At the heart of X2 is the use of attributes. These are akin to labels which provide infor- mation that are associated with image files, or features within them. The beauty of using attri- butes is that they are already familiar to CAM professionals and software developers, and they sit naturally with the current capabilities of CAD and CAM systems. X2 extends the current Gerber specifiation with a series of standard at- tributes that are most important for efficient CAD-to-CAM communications, such as the fun- ction of each layer, whether a pad is a via or an SMD pad, and which are the component drill holes. As rather grandly stated elsewhere, X2 adds intelligence to the Gerber format. Software supporting X2 will read the whole Gerber archi- ve automatically, with all layers in place, while identifying the function of each object. Easy to adopt and to implement, X2 is upwardly compatible with the previous Gerber version. Altium, global leader in Smart System Design Automation, has been quick to reco- gnise the value of X2 and will support it in an upcoming version of Altium Designer. By Q4 2014, Graphicode's widely-used and highly-re- spected GC-Prevue viewer will also support X2. X2 maintains the trademark simplicity for which Gerber has always been known and used, and gives designers and engineers a standar- dized procedure that will require very little to change in their working practices—certainly none that would require approval, testing and all the rest. Equally important, this new revision does not disrupt existing workflows. If the software does not support the new capa- bilities, the old workflow continues to operate. Nobody is forced to buy anything. So this will be a very gentle, low cost improvement indeed, but the effects will be nothing short of revolu- tionary. Coates omitted to mention this latest deve- lopment in the Gerber format, one of the most THE GREAT GERBER VS. ODB++ DEBATE continues feature