Altium works with Valor towards CAM interfaces

Altium has joined Valor's Open Systems Alliance (OSA) partnership programme to develop proven ODB++ interfaces for its PCB products.

Altium has joined Valor's Open Systems Alliance (OSA) partnership programme to develop proven ODB++ interfaces for its PCB products.

ODB++ is the Valor-funded advanced EDA/CAD to CAM data exchange format which has quickly become the format of choice for high-level data exchange, and is now used by thousands of OEM and contract electronic manufacturers (CEM) sites worldwide.

In response to customer demand, Altium decided to provide its customers with ODB++ interfaces in its P-CAD, Protel and CAMtastic! products.

"The growing levels of customer demand that we are experiencing is evidence that Valor's ODB++ file format is fast becoming an emerging industry standard", says Matthew Schwaiger, Director of Product Management at Altium.

"We want to give our customers the advantage of access to this more `intelligent' file format which will provide our customers with efficient integration of their electronic design and manufacturing environments, and will eliminate many causes of manufacturing failures such as data integrity and transfer issues.

This will result in the benefits of reduced prototype iterations, increased accuracy of testing, and shorter set-up times and product release cycles".

With the direct input of ODB++ into the downstream design for manufacturing (DFM), engineering collaboration, and CAM processes, Altium PCB CAD users will have the complete functionality to automatically deliver relevant design data from their Altium tools quickly and easily into the manufacturing stages of the product realization cycle, without loss of design data integrity.

ODB++ allows for the complete elimination of Gerber, Excellon, netlist and component placement files for manufacturing data transfer, with consequent reduction in manufacturing-level engineering costs, and improved quality and cycle times.

Commenting on the partnership with Valor and the OSA program, Schwaiger said, "Working with Valor to implement the ODB++ interfaces has been a straightforward and efficient experience due to Valor's commitment and collaboration, via the Open Systems Alliance.

We are very pleased to be able to strengthen our relationship with Valor and to now offer our customers access to the benefits that Valor's ODB++ brings".

Julian Coates, Vice President of Marketing at Valor said, "Altium's commitment to implementing ODB++ demonstrates the accelerating market demand for the business benefits that ODB++ delivers.

We are pleased to provide the necessary technical resources to Altium, to advise on the format and provide testing support to their R and D group.

We are fully committed to supporting all third-party EDA partners to effectively implement the ODB++ format into their CAD/CAM workflow processes".

The ODB++ interfaces will be fully integrated and available in the upcoming releases of Altium's Protel, and CAMtastic! product lines, and in the next release of P-CAD.

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