Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Enhancement

Extract dialectric properties from ODB++ files

The PCB manufacturing process model can now extract dielectric properties from ODB++ files, including Dielectric Thickness and Dielectric Type.

In 2023 R1 SP1, aPriori extended its GCD extraction for the PCB Fabrication process group to read Dielectric Thickness and Type metadata from ODB++ files.

The Layer GCD now has two new properties Dielectric Thickness (µm) and Dielectric Type, as shown here.

PREPREG and CORE are the two types of Dielectric that aPriori will extract from ODB++ files. If type is not defined in the ODB++ file then the Dielectric Type will display as NONE. If the thickness is not defined in the file, aPriori will leave the field blank, indicated with a dash "-".

In aPriori 2023 R1 SP1, the cost model does react automatically to the new properties. The new properties are for informational purposes and make it easier to check that the material stack up calculated by aPriori matches the ECAD definition. In a future release,. the baseline PCB manufacturing model logic will act automatically upon these new properties when assigning dielectric materials to layers, ensuring an accurate material stack up is defined without the need for extra user input and overrides.

Note: This new functionality is not supported for Gerber files.