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Thu, 11 Jun 2015 10:09:35 -0700 (PDT) | |
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Date: | Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:09:35 -0800 |
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Subject: | Re: [geda-user] Interchange formats |
From: | "Britton Kerin (britton DOT kerin AT gmail DOT com)" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> |
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On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 6:34 PM, Cirilo Bernardo (cirilo_bernardo AT yahoo DOT com) <geda-user AT delorie DOT com> wrote: > 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. Mouser has their own all-in-one simulator-layout-bom thingy now. I don't know about other distributors. But they do have a incentive to support open format efforts, and new designs might end up using them. Too bad the Mouser one is windows-only. Britton
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