The IPC-2581 Consortium, an industry group aimed at promoting adoption of the IPC-2581 standard for transfer of printed-circuit-board (PCB) design data, seems to be gaining momentum with the addition of ScanCAD International, Ucamco (formerly Barco ETS), and Aegis Software as new members. Spearheaded by Cadence Design Systems, the IPC-2581 group spans EDA vendors, CAD/CAM houses, OEMs, and contract manufacturers, all of whom the group claims stand to benefit from an open standard for transfer of PCB design data (see the figure).
The consortium formed in late July, went public with its mission in early August, and had a coming-out party of sorts at last week’s PCB West conference in Santa Clara. At that conference, attendees witnessed a demo in which PCB data was transferred between tools from Cadence and Zuken without a glitch.
The demo used data for a golden-reference board developed by Fujitsu Network Communications (another consortium member). In the demo, data was output in IPC-2581 format by Cadence’s Allegro PCB Designer and read in by Zuken’s CR-5000 suite. “We demonstrated this in an engineering-change-order (ECO) type of activity to show the tools’ ability to detect changes between two iterations of a design,” says Gary Carter, senior manager for CAD engineering at Fujitsu Network Communications. “We have interest in leveraging this capability during definition of our board stack up, so we’re working with suppliers to bring them over from legacy formats.”
What’s behind the sudden interest in IPC-2581, a design-data transfer format that’s been around since 2004 and a standard since 2005 but had largely been ignored? For one thing, the tried-but-true Gerber format for design data still works, but it is quite outdated. Properly implemented, Gerber is perfectly adequate to transfer image data, but it does not transfer board stackup data, materials, design intent, or netlist.
A more recent alternative to Gerber is the ODB++ format pioneered by Valor Computerized Systems. But when Valor was acquired by Mentor Graphics early in 2010, some quarters of the PCB industry became wary. “ODB++ is a widely used format used by many of our customers and Cadence’s customers,” says Steve Chidester, head of product marketing at Zuken. “Valor controlled ODB++ fairly tightly, but as long as they were independent, that’s worked well enough. But with it coming under Mentor’s control, their non-customers are nervous about it. History shows when a vendor controls something they use it to their advantage.”
For its part, Mentor Graphics rejects the notion that its stewardship of ODB++ is anything less than benign. “We’ve all been working to solve the same problems, to find a way to give PCB designers a cleaner, faster output to manufacturing that speeds design time and minimizes risk,” says David Wiens, business development manager for Mentor’s Systems Design Division. “We also want to solve the same problem on the manufacturing side; those are the guys that have to prep the design. That process can introduce quality issues and impact cost.”