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Date:	Thu, 11 Jun 2015 02:34:19 +0000 (UTC)
From:	"Cirilo Bernardo (cirilo_bernardo AT yahoo DOT com)" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
To:	"geda-user AT delorie DOT com" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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Subject:	Re: [geda-user] Interchange formats
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STEP is a different beast altogether and historically the effort
was in IGES and driven by US government contracts and an effort
to unify design and manufacturing files and ultimately reduce
manufacturing costs by having a standard interchange format for
Computer Aided Manufacturing. There was such a large global
interest in this that groups from many countries were involved
early in the process (in fact a lot of early MCAD algorithms
were developed in the Scandinavian countries).

That's the historical background, and STEP was created to
overcome many of the deficiencies in IGES, but the primary
purpose remains largely the same: to provide CAM users with
One True Format to work with and CAD users some hope of
being able to convey shape information to other CAD users.
Since the early days STEP has evolved to include electronics
documentation and testing etc. and for a long time it's had
the dubious distinction of being the world's most complex
standard.

Having said all that, no MCAD on the planet uses STEP as its
native format and I don't even know if STEP can provide that
feature, so it remains little more than an interchange format.

With the big changes in manufacturing in the 1990s IDF
attempted to modernize with IDFv4 and failed miserably;
around the same time the Pro-STEP consortium formed to work
on an IDF replacement based on STEP. Roughly 20 years later
the results are mixed and although there has been some level
of adoption by the likes of Boeing and Airbus (among other
big players). However, Pro-STEP has always been intended for
MCAD-ECAD collaboration and not ECAD-ECAD exchange.

I think for ECAD you'll be lucky to get people to agree on
a format for representing information in schematic symbols,
PCB footprints, and associated mechanical models; I don't
believe you'll ever convince commercial operations to agree
to a universal schematic/artwork definition file since that
kills their lock-in by severely reducing the cost of changing
software. I suspect it is possible to develop a common
symbol/etc format though and convince vendors to adopt it,
but you need to get the big ECAD vendors on side early on
and expect this to take a few years. While STEP was created
to serve manufacturing and demanded by governments as well
as many corporate users, a common ECAD data exchange format
would really be mostly useful for vendors to provide users
with reference models for their ECAD work; you've got to
ask yourself how a vendor like Altium, Mentor, or Cadence
will benefit because if there isn't money in it for them
(save on their own cost or give them a product to sell)
they won't be interested.

- Cirilo




----- Original Message -----
> From: "Britton Kerin (britton DOT kerin AT gmail DOT com)" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
> To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com
> Cc: 
> Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2015 8:52 AM
> Subject: Re: [geda-user] Interchange formats
> 
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 12:26 PM, Evan Foss (evanfoss AT gmail DOT com)
> 
> <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote:
>>  For those of us who are not as well versed in our history of this
>>  subject. I would like to know why so many common EDA formats have
>>  failed?
> 
> I don't see how the folks selling $100k EDA tools with a bunch of locked-in
> customers would benefit from implementing them, and without them on board such
> efforts are probably doomed.  Big outfits have large design silos that they
> aren't going to throw out.  Who forced the mechanical design tool vendors
> to support STEP?
> 
> Britton
> 

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