Research And Implementation The Technology Of Processing PCB Data In The Probe Test System

In the PCB automatic test system, we need to test the PCB (printed circuit boards) whichare designed under different types of EDA（Electronic Design Automation） software. Butbecause of the difference between these EDA software, it is inconvenient to convert and sharethe PCB data file under each platform of EDA software. When designers design the PCB,their use of nonstandard baseline parameter settings will affect the accuracy of PCB data,resulting in unnecessary waste of resources. Therefore, to find a convenient and efficient wayto convert PCB and to provide accurate PCB-related documents for automatic test system is aprompt problem to be solved.This paper mainly investigated the applied technology of relevant PCB data processingin the automatic test system and provided location coordinate file for probe control afterconversion. The main contents included analyzing the structure of PCB data file and the datacontents, analyzing the factors that affect the quality of the conversion of PCB file, studyingthe conversion process from Altium Designer6to Cadence and got the correspondingcoordinate file, and using the coordinate file which was output in the conversion of Lebview.The process is as follows: Firstly this paper analyzed several PCB files which are quite oftenused in the engineering application including their data structures, information contents, andsimilarities and so on. Secondly, because the main files extracted by the automatic test systemwere data files of PCB’s components, including the components’ name, categories, spotcoordinates, angles, substrate BOT and TOP surface and so on. In order to facilitate the test ofa small patch, to complete the setup of parameters in the PCB data conversion process, and toreduce the man-made calibration for single component’s location as much as possible,therefore, with the help of the file generated during the PCB data conversion betweenCadence and Altium Designer6, Place.txt and*.dsn which were used during the analysis ofPCB data earlier were found and the cross-platform conversion of PCB data were realized.Thirdly, by means of forming the hardware of automatic test system and using coordinate files, the process of controlling probe loading was completed on the basis of the relevant controlprogram based on the secondary development of Lebview.The results showed that this paper solved the problem of PCB conversion betweendifferent platforms efficiently. It found the coordinate files and loaded probe to realize itspositioning. Comparing to traditional way of conversion, it effectively reproduced the originaldesigner’s intent of the design and the data files that were obtained in this experiment couldbe reused, which laid a foundation for the subsequent probe test.