PCB I/F Use - Hints & Tips ?

[John Struthers]

I'm interested in hearing from anyone who has made use of OSDM's PCB I/F Module for the exchange of CAD data to and from Mentor Graphics. What are the benefits/issues/gotchas associated with this data transfer process? Discussions of PCB I/F "best practices" would also be most welcome ...

[PM Arnaiz]

We have been using this module for more than 5 years.

We import the data from Mentor, and what we get is a "real" image of the PCB. As you know, by default, the translation produces a surrounding box for each component, wich is defined by the definition on Mentor. For many components this box is not enough, so we have to draw each of the components we want to be translated, and put them in an specific library. Sometimes we can also download many components from the web pages of the manufacturers.

We have never used it to export data to Mentor.

The result is quite good, specially to see the position of connectors, leds, etc..

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more specific information.

PM Arnaiz
Fagor Automation

[kjw]

Hi,
we are using PCB I/F in both directions to and form MENTOR.
It's very easy to make the restrictions for a pcb with high-restrictions and placement-, routing- and wirekeepouts for
both layers. also it is possible to add informations on an
drawing layer global/TOP/Bottom.
We are using the EIF-Version because we can configure the layers, we want to generate and transfer.
The IDF-Version isn't so comfortable.
A good thing is the possibilty to generate a Model-Library to
load a Mentor design not with primitives. This is helpfull with connectors, and optical parts even for parts which are not a
simple box.

kjw

CC included this module up from 12.65 without a license request.

[MikeBoswell]

We are just getting our feet wet w/ the PCB module. We can bring board and component models from PowerPCB(PADS). I am triing at this point to create accurate mech model library to replace the surround boxes. Not a whole lot of documentations supporting this. Im waiting on a reply from Cocreate. If anyone here wouldl like to share some experiences that would be great. Pads supports IDF export. Getting this all to work will be a great productivity gain.

Thanks,