IPC-D-356 ULP Issues

[al_walker]

I have been using the ULP macro ipc-d-356 to create IPC-D-356 netlists, however a major PCB vendor (IPC-accredited) has advised me that the netlists produced by the ULP do not comply with the IPC standard.

Two issues reported:

• Each record should use the 80-column ASCII character format 
• For no connects, characters 4-6 should be 'N/C' whereas the ULP uses code 327 with characters 4-6 blank

Is there another existing method in Fusion Electronics to generate netlists that comply with the IPC-D-356 specification please? If not can I ask that the existing ULP is reviewed and updated to comply please?

Kind Regards,

Al

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @al_walker ,

I hope you're doing well. There is no other mechanism for generating IPC-D-356 netlists. I'll create an enhancement request for this.

With that said, I worked on this ULP at one point and one thing you have to be careful with and long netnames. Because you only have 80 characters and certain characters have to be in certain places. With current ULP long net names are not handled properly and that causes the output to break format.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[al_walker]

HI @jorge_garcia 

Yes, I'm aware of the 14 character limit for net names. In this case it's rather more how No Connects are handled that is being reported as the issue.

Feedback from the PCB vendor:

"For the netlist issue, we checked the IPC file generated by other EAD software, its 4th-6th characters N/C represent single point net/isolated point, while it seems, 327+blank in IPC file you provided, represent single point net/isolated point. So to avoid mistake, please generate and provide IPC file in the standard format, there should be 80 characters for each record.Thanks."

Kind regards,

Al

[lauri_barnhart]

Hi @al_walker,

I wanted to check in and see if you still needed assistance, or if you found a solution to your question already? Let us know if you need further assistance by providing an update or if you have found a solution, please share it with the community so other members who may have the same question could learn from your experience.

All the best,

Lauri | Community Manager

[al_walker]

Hi @lauri_barnhart 

Thanks for reaching out, I'm still waiting on a response on the No Connects issue.

Kind regards,

Al

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @al_walker ,

I hope you're well. I reported this issue and that's about as far as I can take it. There's no guarantee that a fix can be done quickly to the ULP. Options now are to manually try to fix the ULP or modify the output file.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[al_walker]

Hi @jorge_garcia 

I understand that you can only report issues, but could you confirm one thing for me please?

It looks like the netlists produced by the ULP do not conform to the IPC-D-356B standard, dated 2002.

For instance, per section 5.1 Organization of the Job Data File the header does not contain the following parameters in sequence:

JOB

VER

SOURCE

CODE

TITLE

NUM

REV

etc.

And per section 8.2.1  the absence of 327N/C for No Connects

Could you confirm which version of IPC-D-356 that the netlists generated by the ULP are compliant with please?

Kind regards,

Al

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @al_walker ,

The initial release of the ULP was in 2003, but it's unlikely that the IPC-D-356B standard as used. The ULP makes no mention of the version used in the code but I would expect it to be the version prior which is IPC-D-356A.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[al_walker]

Hi @jorge_garcia 

Thanks very much, can I suggest that after 20+ years that we're overdue an update to IPC-D-356B please?

Kind regards,

Al

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @al_walker ,

The ticket is already there, it's just a matter of getting it implemented.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,