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Data Format Update: ODB++ Development Continues
July 4, 2012 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
During NEPCON China 2012, PCBDesign007 China Editor Edy Yu sat down with Ji Wei, channel capability manager with Mentor Graphics. They discussed the current and future development of the ODB++ data transfer format, which has been in the news quite a bit lately. This discussion has been translated from Mandarin into English.
EDY YU: Joining me at NEPCON China 2012 is Ji Wei, the channel capability manager for Mentor Graphics. Nice to meet you. JI WEI: Thanks for inviting me, Edy.
EDY: Right now, you are introducing a new model for coordinating design and manufacture Can you tell me something about this?
JI: Yes, our new model helps coordinate design and manufacturing, which will help our customers avoid reworking their designs.
EDY: How does this model work?
JI: This model brings these manufacturing rules to the frontier of research and development. This will provide guidelines to R&D, so R&D can output the ODB++ data format to meet your manufacturing needs. Years before, the R&D side usually output Gerber to the manufacturing side, but this can easily cause compatibility issues, missing data, and all kinds of other problems. That will lead to problems on the manufacturing side.
EDY: Speaking of ODB++, what kind of improvements does this bring to customers’ manufacturing?
JI: As I said, we used to use the Gerber data format for manufacturing. Gerber is only graphic data; it doesn’t have some important information regarding the components, Web, test and assembly. ODB++ is different. Compared to Gerber, it’s a package with integral information. So when you output the ODB++ data format to the manufacturing side, they will realize what kind of DFI problems or risk they will encounter. By using ODB++, you can do the DFI analysis during R&D and the result can be passed to the manufacturing side, which will give some guidance to the manufacturing side to prevent data loss.
EDY: Are these advantages only limited to Mentor Graphics customers?
JI: No, ODB++ is getting more and more popular within our industry, It’s well recognized as a open data format that will replace Gerber in the near future. All of the design software we are developing can output the ODB++ format; it’s open to the public.
EDY: What do you see for the future of ODB++ development?
JI: From the PCB fabricator side, our software 2000 has a 90%+ market share. The CAM side uses ODB++. On the DFM side, we also have a monopoly on the market, so this segment will support ODB++ too. On the manufacturing side, their equipment and tools can support ODB++ as well. So in the future, from R&D, PCB manufacturing, PCB assembly and test, all these flows will use ODB++ instead of Gerber and x-y data. We believe ODB++ will be more and more popular as more people will use this format.
EDY: Thank you very much.
JI: Thank you.