Equipping the PCB Design and Supply Chain with 21ST CENTURY DATA

摘要

PCBs have changed significantly over the past three decades, yet to the surprise of many, we still commonly use 30-year-old ways of communicating design intent to manufacturing. These decades' old data-communication formats were originally conceived to drive the emerging numerically controlled machines. Adoption of these formats was further driven by the growth of computer-aided design tools in the early 1980s and the need to move from reprographic photography artwork to digital data-driven manufacturing. Many formats were created by hardware manufacturers themselves, or derived from broader standards, and over time became commonplace. Such numerically controlled equipment included photoplotters, drill/mill machines, assembly (insertion/pick-and-place), test, etc. The Gerber Scientific Corp., a photoplotter hardware manufacturer, created one of the industry's best-known de facto standards, Gerber RS-274-D, which later evolved into RS-274X.~1 But Gerber data alone were not enough to produce a completed PCB assembly, so other data formats were created, again to drive specific numerically controlled manufacturing equipment.