Abstract: EDIF and PCB Standards

The goal of this tutorial isto provide an in depth understanding of the issues related to design interchange and thesolutions provided by the Electronic Design Interchange Format (EDIF) in the conne ctivity,schematics and PCB/MCM design and manufacturing domains. In addition, the tutorial willoutline the position the EDIF developments in relation to other standards developments.

The tutorial will be structured as follows:

• Overview of the design interchangeproblem; why and where are designs interchanged? What is the importance of designinteroperability?
• Requirements for design interchange.
• EDIFbackground
• EDIF development methodology
• EDIF architecture: current EDIF architecture -rationale and description
• EDIF and Libraries
• EDIF and Connectivity
• EDIF and support for schematics
• Designinterchange in the PCB and MCM domains: special requirements
• Overall structure of the EDIFsolution to the transfer of designs between CAD systems and from CAD to CAM.
• Other standards in the PCB/MCM designand manufacture domain: STEP, IPC, Gerber and others

Abstract: Information Modelling

This tutorial provides an overview of the application ofinformation modelling in the EDA domain and then introduces the EXPRESS Information Modelling language (ISO10303 Part 11) which is the language most used in EDA domain.

The tutorial will be structured as follows:

• Review of areas of the EDA domainwhere information modelling is - or might be- applied
• Introduction to EXPRESS - what it is,its history, its current status
• Basic EXPRESSmodelling capabilities - schemas, entities, attributes, types
• Super type hierarchies, inheritance
• Constraint specification: local and global rules
• EXPRESS support environments: summary and examples

Throughout the presentation, examples will be used to illustrate the capabilities of EXPRESS.

The second part of the tutorial will be a short practical class in whichparticipants will be asked to write a small EXPRESS information model - and to presenttheir solutions to other tutorial participants.

Hilary J. Kahn

Hilary Kahn is a Professor ofComputer Science at the University of Manchester. She has led a large CAD group atManchester for a number of years where research has been done in areas as varied assimulation and layout, integrated system design, hardware acceleration for CAD,applications of AI techniques in electronic design and most recently, in the development ofEDA standards, specially EDIF, and in the applicati on of information modelling in the EDAdomain. She is currently chairman of the EDIF Technical Experts Group and an activeparticipant in the standards world as convenor of IEC TC93 WG3 and of CENELEC TC217 WG1.She has also founded the EDIF Technical Cen tre which provides support world-side for EDIF.