The present invention relates to a system and method for extracting material differences in different circuit board design diagrams.
When a design of a circuit board is upgraded, both design and manufacturing production houses need to be informed of any material changes between an old model and an upgraded model. This is usually done by manually comparing the previous circuit board design diagram against the upgraded circuit board design diagram section by section, jotting down differences along the way. If a component in a section is removed, or if the section introduces a new component, or even if an attribute of the component is changed such as its material property, supplier, etc., the changes needs to be recorded. In fact, every changed instance on a sophistically assembled circuit board with thousands of components attributes needs to be recorded. Thus manually recording of changes between a pervious circuit board and its upgraded model is a very tedious job with a low efficiency and a high error rate.
China App. Pub. No.-1444161 named “method for analyzing data in a bill of material (BOM)” and published on Sep. 24, 2003 disclosed a method for analyzing data in a BOM to provide referential information for purchasing and production. However, the above method cannot be applied to compare information between two BOMs, such as to compare the BOM of a previous circuit board design diagram with the BOM of an upgraded circuit board design diagram.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method for extracting material differences in different circuit board design diagrams resulting in higher work efficiency and accuracy, so as to assist circuit board designers and producers.
A system for extracting material differences between different circuit board design diagrams in accordance with a preferred embodiment is provided. The system includes: an extracting module used for extracting a first raw BOM from a first circuit design diagram of a circuit board, and extracting a second raw BOM from a second circuit design diagram of the circuit board, wherein the second circuit design diagram is partially identical to the first circuit design diagram; a converting module for converting the first raw BOM to a first standard BOM, and converting the second raw BOM to a second standard BOM; an integrity checking module for determining whether data in the two standard BOMs are error free; and a comparing module for comparing the two standard BOMs to extract material differences in the two design diagrams of the circuit board.
Another preferred embodiment provides a method for extracting material differences between different circuit board design diagrams. The method includes the steps: (a) extracting a first raw BOM from a first circuit design diagram of a circuit board, and extracting a second raw BOM from a second circuit design diagram of the circuit board, wherein the second circuit design diagram is partially identical to the first circuit design diagram; (b) converting the first raw BOM to a first standard BOM, and converting the second raw BOM to a second standard BOM; (c) determining whether data in the two standard BOMs are error free; and (d) comparing the two standard BOMs to extract material differences in the two circuit design diagrams of the circuit board, if the data in the two standard BOMs are error free.
Other advantages and novel features of the embodiments will be drawn from the following detailed description with reference to the attached drawings, in that:
Each standard BOM file includes information describing parts stored in different lists in the BOM file. Since the motherboard may be single sided or double sided, the transformed standard BOM files may be different in some aspects. For example, if the motherboard is single sided, each transformed standard BOM file may have four lists as: a first list named SMD (short for surface mount device) about surface mount parts, a second list named PTH (short for plated-through-hole) about through-hole parts, a third list named PACKING about packing parts, and a fourth list named DUMMY about non-functional parts. If the motherboard is double sided, each transformed standard BOM file may have five lists as: a first list named SMD TOP about surface mount devices on a top side of the motherboard, a second list named SMD BOTTOM about surface mount devices on a bottom side of the motherboard, and a third list named PTH, a fourth list named PACKING, and a fifth list named DUMMY. Each list in the standard BOM files includes items illustrated in
In step S104, the integrity checking module 130 checks the data integrity of the standard BOM format files. If the data fails the integrity check, the procedure goes to step S107 described later.
If the data in the two standard BOM format files pass the data integrity check, in step S105, the comparing module 140 compares each list in the first standard BOM file with each corresponding list in the second standard BOM file, so as to extract all material changes in the two design diagrams of the motherboard. For example, whether a part on a location is removed, or the location increases a new part, or the material property of the part on the location has been changed, such as the kind of the material, the quality of the material, the supplier of the material, and so on.
In step S106, the writing module writes all material changes into a list in the second standard BOM file, which may include items as: LocationManufacturer P/N\Original\UsageNew Usage\Description\Supplier\Supplier P/N\Parameter Value(illustrated in
In step S107, if the integrity checking module 130 determines that the data in the two standard BOM files do not satisfy the motherboard design requirements, the integrity checking module 130 checks the two circuit design diagrams to find error data, and amends the error data. Hereinafter, the procedure returns to step S101 described above.
Although the present invention has been specifically described on the basis of a preferred embodiment and preferred method, the invention is not to be construed as being limited thereto. Various changes or modifications may be made to the embodiment and method without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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200510036283.6 | Jul 2005 | CN | national |