Integrated Computer Aided Design, Documentation and Manufacturing System for PCB Electronics

This paper describes an integrated computer aided design, documentation and manufacturing system, which assures data integrity from physical design to manufacturing with the aid of one phase data input and integrated parts data base. Unique features of the system are comprehensive documentation support for PCB electronics, one-phase user friendly data input, intensive input data checking, support for part and document numbering and PCB numbering, user definable document formats and languages and fully automatic generation of N.C. programs for insertion machines and input data for test equipment. Although the design support is highly automatic, the system is just computer aided allowing the user to control the work flow and by providing the possibility for the user to overdrive the data base information. The designer experience, intuition and imagination can be fully utilized.