RoHS Compliance in 2D and 3D Legacy Data Migrations

Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (ROHS) legislation has vendors with Europena business scrambling and will have an effect on CAD data

By Stan Ochs, ITI TranscenData, September 2005

Manufacturers with European interests are scrambling to become RoHS-compliant by July 1, 2006. This race against time is also burdening designers and product development groups with the job of identifying compliant and non-compliant CAD parts and assemblies. In many cases, the non-compliant parts and assemblies originate from data stored in legacy CAD systems.

Companies are re-evaluating the cost of maintaining and archiving this CAD data, with the intent of eliminating hardware, software, and labor associated with these systems. If your company is considering a legacy data migration as part of a RoHS compliance initiative, there are several best practices to keep in mind:

1. Prioritize Essential Product Lines - most companies struggle with where to start. Our 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.

2. Set Specific Priorities - a successful legacy data migration is usually a one-time event. Therefore, your design and analysis groups need to prioritize 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 associability, 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.

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

4. 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 finalized 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.

5. Budget Against Hidden Costs As Well As Actuals - arguments for migrating legacy CAD data typically center around the elimination of CAD licenses, annual software maintenance charges, dedicated hardware platforms and CAD administration costs. However, many design organizations do not examine the hidden labor savings associated with individual translations, manual rework and file clean-up, or CAD model re-mastering. The labor costs required to (a) physically track down the data within various locations or systems, (b) vault the data into a PDM or PLM system, and (c) create archiving methods for RoHS-compliant data are often forgotten or simply omitted as part of the justification and return on investment calculations.

July 1, 2006 is just around the corner but savvy organizations that currently employ these practices should be well ahead of the curve. For more information about best practices for legacy CAD data migrations, visit www.transcendata.com/ldm.htm or email info@transcendata.com.

About the Author

Stan Ochs has helped global manufacturing entities address the issues of legacy data migrations, for more than 14 years. He currently serves as the Business Unit Manager for OEM Translation Development and oversees the Legacy Data Migration Practice at International TechneGroup Incorporated. He may be reached at 513-576-3983 or by emailing stan.ochs@iti-global.com.

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