PCB Tech - Coordinate data export method of PCB design software

Coordinate data export method of PCB design software

The design departments of modern electronic manufacturing companies almost all use PCB software for circuit design, and the production and manufacturing departments also use a large number of automated equipment such as placement machines and plug-in machines for production. How to establish an effective connection between the two to improve production Efficiency and reducing production costs are the research goals of process technicians.

In fact, most of the feature data required for programming of processing equipment in the SMT processing production line can be obtained from PCB design files, such as the position coordinates of the components on the PCB, the overall description data of the PCB, and so on. We can directly export the corresponding CAD coordinate data from the PCB design file, merge it with the BOM (Bill of Material) file provided by the design department, and convert it into a patch program that can drive the patch device to run, and then use the disk, U disk, network or RS-232C interface, etc. are transmitted to the control computer of the processing equipment to directly drive the CNC processing equipment. This not only saves data preparation and programming time, but also improves data accuracy and eliminates errors and data incompleteness during manual data processing.

There are many PCB design software on the market, such as Protel and P-cad from Altium, Powerpcb/Pads and Mentor Expedition from Mentor, Allegro and Orcad from Cadence, Cadstar and CR-5000 from Zuken, etc., especially Protel The three PCB design software, Pads and Allegro, almost occupy more than 80% of the Chinese PCB design software market. In other words, if you master the coordinate data export methods of these three PCB design software, you can basically deal with most new The product is a challenge, which is especially important for circuit board manufacturers that undertake a large number of outsourcing products.

But the problem is that there are many process technicians, especially those who are just engaged in the SMT industry, who do not master the export method of PCB design software coordinate data, so they cannot convert the CAD coordinate data into the placement program, and they still use the placement equipment. The original patch program editing method that the cameras find component coordinate data on the circuit board one by one seriously restricts the improvement of production efficiency and quality. This article will introduce in detail the export methods and steps of all common PCB design software coordinate data to provide reference for process technicians engaged in related work. There are two methods for exporting coordinate data summarized by the author:

1) Use the function of PCB design software to export;

2) Export using special CAM software.

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