The new data transfer format provides comprehensive support for embedded components.

Board designers today must provide fabricators files beyond those containing the design data in order to describe what is needed for embedded components. It’s a nonstandard process, different for each designer-fabricator relationship, so every fabricator must contend with multiple, disparate, nonintelligent formats and communications. Sometimes the additional files get out of sync with the design data, thus requiring phone calls or more revisions of the files to sync up what is intended. This is a slow, manual and error-prone process, which is still used even with other intelligent data transfer formats.

An additional challenge is that while some ECAD tools may now support state-of-the-art embedded components – e.g., face-up (flipped), pins on both top and bottom, formed (etched, printed) – the handoff to manufacturing formats has not evolved to support them at the same pace.

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