At 09:44 AM 5/22/01 +1000, van de Werken, Matthew (DEM, PH) wrote:
>It's funny you should mention "pipe", because if everything was text (as it
>is quite often in the Unix world), we'd be able to *pipe* the files through
>a script to convert from one type to another...
It's not quite that simple, unfortunately. Most CAD systems have a text
output, and it is still quite a bit of work to write a translator, and even
the best translators can introduce problems. Translating a language is not
just a matter of having a word substitution table, there is also grammar.
CAD programs approach the design problem in different ways. Even the same
CAD program, from version to version, can have translation problems, as the
ways the PCB is represented shift.
What is needed is to start with a common representation language that
incorporates all the necessary data, rules, etc. This would need to be a
living standard, though even having a basic level standard would be useful.
Now, I think there is such a standard (GENCAM), so the question is why CAD
companies, or at least some of them, have not provided the capacity to read
and write it.
Router Solutions has its own language, I think, and Wolfgang's translators
all are written to go to and from that language. I think he also has GENCAM
translators.
But it would be much better for each CAD company to read and write GENCAM;
and if GENCAM is not good enough, to cooperate with the other companies to
make a better standard. Obviously, each company wants the standard to most
efficiently represent their own data, so there is lots of potential for
conflict there. But it is in the interest of *all* the customers of CAD
companies to have good bidirectional translation, and it is only the habit
of too many beancounters of thinking of their own welfare as being
something different from the welfare of their customers that keeps the
companies from serving us as well as they might.
Gee, thinks Protel -- I like the Protel culture, but I do know that there
are elements in it that think this way -- if we supply a translator that
will move our design data to PADS, that will make it easier for our
customers to move to PADS. Yes, it would.
So Protel has PADS import and not export. OrCAD will import Protel, but it
will only export Protel if the file originally came from Protel, so you can
use their router, for example, if you wanted to. I think I tried it a long
time ago. It worked. And Protel has OrCAD PCB import and not export. But
Schematic *can* go in both directions.
I just lost a sale of two Protel licenses to a company. A purchase order
had been approved and, in fact it had been issued, but somebody forgot to
mail it. The engineer called and asked why the software had not arrived. I
said I never got the P.O. He checked and found what I just mentioned. So he
said that he would get the P.O. to me pronto. In two days it hadn't come,
so I called him. He was one frustrated engineer. A higher-up management
type had said that they used a fabrication/assembly house that received
PADS files and they had a design contractor who used PADS and he did not
care that Protel was easier to use and less expensive. He was pretty
unhappy about it; he was signed up for a Protel seminar the next week and
he thought he would have to cancel it.
I suggested that he might go anyway, for his own benefit, since it had been
paid for by the company, and that he might point out to management that fab
and assembly houses should not be supplied design files, it's actually a
bad idea. And Protel would import PADS, so if they wanted to use that
contractor, they still could. But, obviously, if Protel had been able to
write PADS, the argument would have been much stronger.
I don't yet know if he went, I'll eventually call him. But I haven't
received the P.O.
As a Protel service bureau, we very often have a need to translate files,
and it is not uncommon that we need to translate them out of Protel. OrCAD
schematics are the most common, I'd say. Yes, Protel will write OrCAD, but,
shall we say, there are complications.
If I could write Allegro, I could land a ton of business, and some of those
companies would eventually notice that a much less expensive CAD package
was getting the job done, and they might move to Protel, as a few Allegro
companies are doing anyway. Maybe I should talk to Wolfgang.
Companies prosper by serving the needs of their customers. The more needs
the company can serve, the more it can prosper. Find a way to meet people's
needs, there is a way to make a profit doing it.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Abdulrahman Lomax
P.O. Box 690
El Verano, CA 95433
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