CAD holds key to RoHS compliance

An ITI product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 29, 2005

In the scramble to become RoHS-compliant by 1st July 2006, designers and product development groups have the job of identifying compliant and noncompliant CAD parts and assemblies.

Manufacturers with European interests are scrambling to become RoHS-compliant by 1st July 2006.

This race against time is also burdening designers and product development groups with the job of identifying compliant and noncompliant CAD parts and assemblies.

In many cases, the noncompliant parts and assemblies originate from data stored in legacy CAD systems.

Companies are re-evaluating the cost of maintaining and archiving such CAD data, with the intent of eliminating hardware, software and labour associated with these systems.

For any company considering a legacy data migration as part of a RoHS compliance initiative, there are several best practices to keep in mind.

First, prioritise essential product lines - most companies struggle with where to start.

ITI's recommendation is start with essential product lines, including those that are currently in production or product lines for which you maintain inventories of replacement and/or warranty parts.

If you wish to maintain the 2D drawings or 3D files of a part or assembly no longer in production, leave these parts for the final phase of the migration.

Secondly, set specific priorities - a successful legacy data migration is usually a one-time event.

Therefore, your design and analysis groups need to prioritise specific criteria that can be applied to the overall project.

For instance, your goal may be to get the data in a format that can be read by your CAD system without the need for associativity, history or features.

Goals that require live dimensions, specific tolerances and/or modifiable data will not only require more money and resources, but also time to completion.

Thirdly, employ a phased approach - whether you are outsourcing the migration or performing it in-house, do not try to migrate all the files at once.

Create a subset of files that contain a full mixture of variances, tolerances, formatting and scaling that you think is required for a successful migration.

In the event a subset fails, you can mitigate the risk within the subset and redefine priorities.

You can also compare and/or validate the migration of 3D data against the originals to ensure a quality translation is being performed.

Fourthly, consider RoHS compliant templates and naming conventions - some manufacturers require suppliers to adopt RoHS-compliant naming conventions and/or design templates that include a "RoHS compliant" stamp.

Naming conventions and design templates need to be finalised before you begin the migration, especially if your group wishes to automate the entire migration.

Failure to do will require manual intervention for each file, which defeats the time saving benefits of an automated migration approach.

Finally, budget against hidden costs as well as actuals - arguments for migrating legacy CAD data typically centre around the elimination of CAD licences, annual software maintenance charges, dedicated hardware platforms and CAD administration costs.

However many design organisations do not examine the hidden labour savings associated with individual translations, manual rework and file clean-up, or CAD model remastering.

The labour costs required to physically track down the data within various locations or systems, vault the data into a PDM or PLM system and create archiving methods for RoHS-compliant data are often forgotten or simply omitted as part of the justification and return on investment calculations.

July 2006 is just around the corner, but savvy organisations that currently employ these practices should be well ahead of the curve.