Physical Design and Manufacturing Information Aspects Aspects of the AT&T Bell Laboratories CAD System

The features for physical design are contained in the integrated Interconnection Design System (IDS) component of the AT&T Bell Laboratories CAD System. These features are used by transferring a file (the Common Design File, CDF) created in the prototype design phase by the Engineering Design System (EDS) component of the System. IDS also has the flexibility to handle design processes that start with a textual description of design intent or with the digitizing of preexisting designs. IDS can process circuit packs that are based on double-sided or multi-layer etched technology or on discrete wire technologies. IDS can process backplanes using etched, discrete, or mixed technologies. Checks are provided to ensure the consistency of the design intent, the schematic drawing, and the physical layout. Audits are provided for electrical and mechanical criteria. The complete design description is contained in the CDF, which may be depicted using assembly and piecepart drawings for the physical attributes and schematics for the logical/circuit attributes. The manufacture of initial models or volume product is aided with CAM data extracted from the CDF for artwork, component insertion, discrete wiring, drill, high voltage test, and bare board test machines. IDS uses a single, comprehensive data base, the CDF, to accumulate data in uniformly defined formats. The CDF serves as a data bus among many independently designed application units. The CDF for a complete design is transferred to manufacturing organizations or other design organizations. A component file contains the schematic and physical definitions of components shared throughout the AT&T businesses, locally or on a single project. IDS uses shared mainframes in computation centers, and minicomputers in dedicated environments. There are now six mainframe hosts at sites from Colorado to New Jersey, and users are distributed among eleven sites. The IDS users are primarily expert layout and documentation people in the Design Engineering Staff organizations of the AT&T design and manufacturing organizations. There are several hundred users who are concurrently processing over 500 design codes. The productivity of designers has been increased fourfold over the preexisting design processes while the design complexity and the scope of activities has also increased. Success with the comprehensive IDS has encouraged its extension to all corners of the AT&T development and manufacturing community. This has stimulated the development of follow-up aids that will further reduce the cost of design by using more effective computing environments and improved algorithms and processes.