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18 The PCB Design Magazine • May 2016 With Intercept's Pantheon, the wire displays in red if you make it too long, blue if make it too short, and the target length is continually re- ported at the cursor tip so you know how you are doing along the way. Here we are, again con- cluding that sometimes only the semiautomatic method can be the real winner in the end. Trends in the Completion and Post-Processing Phases of Design Bill of Materials Creation It seems that no matter how many flexible options software vendors offer, bill of materials creation remains a largely customized, scripted affair across a large portion of the industry. Ev- ery manufacturer has different BOM require- ments and formatting expectations, and every EDA customer uses slightly different methods to specify the same information as everyone else. The result is that no matter how flexible the EDA software vendor tries to make the pro- cess of BOM creation, it seems to fall short in one way or another. Intercept attempted to address these issues in both its Mozaix schematic and Pantheon layout applications by collecting information from every customer with a custom BOM out- put process and collating each requirement into common needs and special needs per customer. Common needs were addressed first, such as column width definitions, which property val- ues to output, adding custom company head- ers, template setup, and real-time preview of the BOM output to aid the setup process. Then, to address the various needs of customers beyond the basics, two separate generic report tabs al- low for customized reports to be appended to the BOM report, or output as separate files. But on and above these efforts, it seems that greater unification of file formats among manu- facturers is needed to really smooth this process into something that can be automated. With so many manufacturers across the country, this is probably not a likely change in the near future, and this output will probably continue to lack an easy path toward automation. FAB & Assembly Drawings It is fair to say that many EDA vendors have earned a bad reputation in the area of fabrica- tion and assembly drawing output capability. For all the sophistication offered to accomplish the PCB layout, it is often a nightmare getting the finished layout submitted for fabrication. Some vendors use DXF outputs to AutoCAD or third party processing applications to aid the assembly and fab drawing process, which is an embarrassing admission of failure for the EDA software vendors. This is also a breakdown in the design cycle and can introduce errors be- tween the finished board and the actual draw- ings that get sent for fabrication. One such company that has helped the in- dustry quite a bit in this area is Downstream Technologies. Their flagship product, BluePrint PCB, offers easy to use software to aid designers with the final post-processing phase of the design cycle. They have done a very nice job of address- ing areas where EDA vendors have fallen short. But not all vendors are completely without drawing capabilities. For the applications that THE STATE OF THE ELECTRONIC DESIGN AUTOMATION NATION Figure 6: Tuning in tight areas can be a nightmare, whether automatic or manual.