EDIF, the world's most widely used electronic design interchange format, is an essential part of the Electronic Industries Alliance's (EIA) service to the electronics industry. Since its inception over thirteen years ago, EDIF has become a vital part of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. EDIF Version 4 0 0, the latest version of the standard added support for PCBs and multichip modules, manufacturing drawings and technology rules, to the capabilities for schematics connectivity, hierarchy, libraries and configuration already provided by EDIF Version 3 0 0. EDIF Version 4 0 0 is fully upwards compatible from EDIF Version 3 0 0. EDIF Version 4 0 0 is an ANSI/EIA standard and is going through the IEC standardization process.

This paper/presentation will provide a discussion of implementation of the EDIF 3 0 0 and 4 0 0 standard. Discussion items will include, but not be limited to; supported systems, compatibility issues, configuration control and translator coverage.

Bio

Dr. Hilary Kahn is a professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester and has been involved in Computer Aided Design and Software Engineering for many years. Hilary started the CAD group in the Department of Computer Science and with the group have become very heavily involved in EDA standards, integration issues in CAD and most recently the application of information modeling to the understanding of the information requirements of large engineering systems. Her interest in information modeling led to the adoption of modeling techniques by the EDIF organization in 1990. As a result, the EDIF standard includes an EXPRESS information model which defines the formal semantics of the format. Hilary chairs the EDIF Technical Experts Group and is a member of the EDIF Steering Committee. She also chairs the IEC TC93 Working Group 3 (design data Interchange) and serves on the BSI GEL/93 committee.