ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTATION TRANSFER GUIDELINES

Last Revision: 07-17-2001

 

OVERVIEW:

This document provides guidance for EIT customers to transfer selected documentation electronically.

 

APPLICABILITY:

This document applies to any EIT customer wishing to transfer the following document types electronically;

 

Bills of Material (BOM)

Assembly drawings

Programmed part information

Blank Printed Circuit Board (PCB) fabrication files

Custom fabricated parts (i.e. sheet metal, front panels, enclosures, etc.)

 

ACCEPTABLE TRANSFER METHODS:

Documentation may be transferred to EIT using one of the following methods;

 

E-mail attachment via the Internet.  E-mail addresses are available from your EIT point of contact

EIT corporate File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site

3.5” high density IBM compatible floppy disk

 

ACCEPTABLE FILE COMPRESSION METHODS:

File compression may be done using WINZIP or PKZIP. If your file is so large that it requires spanning floppy disks, we prefer that you transfer it to us via e-mail or FTP.

 

ACCEPTABLE DATA TRANSFER FORMATS:

Bills of Material (in order of preference);

dBase III compatible (.DBF extension)

Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.XLS extension)

Microsoft Word document (.DOC extension), in table form, Courier font (fixed spacing)

Columnar ASCII (.TXT or .ASC).  Please do not use Rich Text Format (RTF)

Other formats require prior coordination with your EIT point of contact

 

Assembly Drawings;

AutoCAD Release 13 drawing file (.DWG extension)

AutoCAD Drawing eXchange Format (.DXF extension)

Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF extension)

Other formats require prior coordination with your EIT point of contact.

 

Programmed Parts;

Most standard formats are acceptable.  Please coordinate with your EIT point of contact.

 

Blank PCB Fabrication Files;

Most standard formats are acceptable. Please coordinate with your EIT point of contact. For design work, we can accommodate Pads and Accel.

 

Custom Fabricated Parts;

AutoCAD Release 13 drawing file (.DWG extension)

AutoCAD Drawing eXchange Format (.DXF extension)

Adobe Portable Document Format (.PDF extension)

Other formats require prior coordination with your EIT point of contact.

 

PREFERRED BILL OF MATERIAL CONTENTS:

The object is to get your BOM into our computerized manufacturing system, which has specific non-variable fields that must be accommodated. If you can adhere to the following guidelines, your BOM can be converted to our required format quickly and without human induced error. We will of course attempt to convert your electronic BOM regardless of the content you are able to provide.  Following are dBase III compatible field names, types, lengths and hints to minimize conversion effort and maximize accuracy. When using dBase format, the fields do not have to appear in this order:

 

DBase III;

PARENT, character, 18 positions. This is typically your Assembly Number. This field should be filled in every record.

 

PARENTREV, character, 4 positions. This is your Assembly Number Revision. This field should be filled in every record.

 

LINENUM, numeric, 4 positions. This is sequential number used to group like components with different reference designations.  This field should be filled in every record.

 

CUSTPN, character, 18 positions. This field, is used to identify your internal component number.  This field should be filled in every record.

 

CUSTPNREV, character, 4 positions. This is an optional field, to identify the current revision of your internal component number.  If used, it should be filled in every record.

 

MANUF, character, 10 positions. This is an abbreviation of the component manufacturers name.  EIT has an extensive list of standardized abbreviations that we use. If you would like a copy, please ask your EIT point of contact, and one will be forwarded to you.  (You do not have to use our abbreviations in your BOM)

 

MANUFPN, character, 29 positions.  This is the component manufacturers complete, orderable part number. Please do not use generic part numbers in this field. You should include manufacturers codes to specify component packaging. If the packaging does not fit EITs Manufacturing requirements, we will change it to suit. (For example if the part number you used specified bulk parts, we will change to tape and reel, if required by our machinery)

 

QUANTITY, numeric, 10 positions, of which 4 are to the right of the decimal point. This field should be filled in every record.

 

REFDES, character, 40 positions. This is where your component designations go.  Multiple designations per field are acceptable, so long as you have filled the PARENT, REV and LINENUM field in every record.  We prefer that you group like components, and sort (alphabetize) reference designators.  We prefer that you list each reference designator like “C1, C2, C3” rather than “C1-C3”.

 

COMMENTS, character, 40 positions. This is an optional field where you may put whatever comments you like.

 

Microsoft Excel spreadsheet;

Use the same fields as dBase above

On the topmost row of the spreadsheet, enter the field names as shown above

Set the font to Courier in the entire spreadsheet

Remove any lines or graphics

Remove any embedded objects

Remove any blank rows or columns

Left justify the text in the entire spreadsheet

Remove all but the active worksheet

Remove any headers or footers

 

Microsoft Word document;

Build the BOM as a table

Apply all of the above Excel guidelines

 

Columnar ASCII;

Set font to Courier BEFORE you start creating an ASCII BOM

Adjust paper size, paper orientation and font size to fit all of the dBase fields for one record on the same line in the file

Use the Excel formatting guidelines above

Use spaces to move between columns of data, NOT tabs

When saving file, please be sure to save as plain ASCII, not RTF