Consortium Drives Open PCB Design-Data Standard

With its acquisition of Valor and ODB++, Mentor inherited stewardship of an existing ecosystem that surrounds ODB++ and is not likely to abandon support of customers that are invested in that ecosystem. “It would run counter to logic to say that we would retire ODB++,” says Wiens. Mentor has no plans at present to support the IPC-2581 format, but Wiens says, “if our major customers came to us and asked us to support IPC-2581, guess what would happen? We want to solve the problem and not get into a format war.”

It’s worth pointing out that the IPC-2581 standard in part owes its existence to Valor’s technology donation of ODB++. Both formats have evolved since then, but none of the parties in the ensuing debate can categorically state that one is technically superior to the other. “The relationship between the formats is very close because IPC-2581 is based on the public domain version of ODB++,” says Humair Mandavia, senior product marketing manager at Zuken. “New enhancements to both formats are continuing, so there are probably some differences. But we are not aware of any significant gaps between the two.”

Mandavia opined that users are not fully sold on ODB++’s ability to replace the venerable Gerber format. “In our conversations with attendees at the PCB Design Conference, they tell us they still find it necessary to provide Gerber and NC drill data whenever they send ODB++ to a manufacturer. This is because it is the only method for validating both sets of data. Gerber has one common flavor, which is RS274X; ODB++ translation can be of different versions or contain key words that may not be interpreted by manufacturers in the same way.”

Nevertheless, the IPC-2581 Consortium’s goal is to rally behind an open format that would seem more resistant to any one entity’s influence. “Our motivation was to have a more intelligent way to produce design data without so many variables,” says Hemant Shah, director of product marketing for silicon realization at Cadence. “We wanted a more intelligent data-export format that eliminates a lot of extra drawings and spreadsheets outside of the central format that we’ve historically provided.”

Cadence will provide support for IPC-2581-formatted data output with the next release of the Allegro PCB Designer suite. Support in the OrCAD PCB Designer is pending. For Zuken, support is already built into its flagship CR-5000 PCB design suite, with support in the CADstar tool coming later.

IPC-2581 Consortium
www.ipc2581.com

Cadence Design Systems
www.cadence.com

Mentor Graphics
www.mentor.com

Zuken
www.zuken.com