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January 2015 • The PCB Design Magazine 41 experts), but they are to only be contributors. This industry has enough legacy examples of someone within a certain company asserting their influence so that they specifically come out on top. 3) This new MCAD-ECAD standard will contain a map- ping of all of the properties that exist in every EDA de- sign tool. There are enough existing mapping standards to provide reference. Study them all, extract the best information (including cor- ner use-cases), and struc- ture them in a data format that all can see and under- stand without requiring a master's degree in com- puter science or database management. KISS (keep it succinctly simple). 4) Once this standard has been finalized, a single MCAD-ECAD collaboration tool should be made by a new EDA company that will submit a business proposal for creating this tool, and it will be funded by all of the MCAD-ECAD EDA tool participants. That means all current EDA tool vendors can stay working on exactly what they are specialists in, and someone else will take on this responsibil- ity of "getting it right the first time." 5) Both the EDA tool vendor and the user have the right to label any property as IP to be shared in this collaborative environment. Be frugal with this label, as it should be very well assumed based on today's network short- comings that too much protection attracts the wrong kind of people to exploit hidden in- formation. Anything that is not labeled IP is made available for this collaborative specifica- tion. 6) This collaborative environment should be able to take all of the available design data and send it bi-directionally between all tools seamlessly. 7) Create outputs to all existing formats for all downstream vendors of the MCAD-ECAD design process that are easy to setup and output as a "one-button solution." 8) When the tool is created and released, the EDA vendors who funded this project will get a percentage back of the sales of this new tool from the new MCAD-ECAD company. This can be downgraded over time, so I leave these specif - ics to the business experts. 9) This MCAD-ECAD company cannot be pur- chased by any of the cur- rent EDA tool vendors for a period of at least 10 years. If any EDA tool company wishes to purchase this new MCAD-ECAD com- pany for their own portfo- lio after this deadline, the purchasing company must allow for a five-year grace period where the standard MUST remain open and not proprietary for at least five years. 10) If and when No. 9 were to happen, this would give all of the other EDA vendors a chance to decide on what to do going forward. I am 100% on the side of the EDA tool us- ers who really want a quality seamless MCAD- ECAD no-nonsense tool solution by 2020. Please e-mail your feedback to Editor Andy Shaughnessy, who has agreed to post responses to this column. Thank you all for your time, as always. PCBDESIgN TRuE MCAD-ECAD ARCHITECTuRE: A COMMON-SENSE APPROACH continues the town crier Daniel J. Smith is a principal technologist for raytheon Missile Systems. he has taught multiple aspects of the PCB design process internationally, and he has authored several PCB-related patents, articles, and standards over the past 30+ years. To contact Smith, click here. When the tool is created and released, the eda vendors who funded this project will get a percentage back of the sales of this new tool from the new MCad-eCad company. this can be downgraded over time, so I leave these specifics to the business experts. " "