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The surface mount manufacture of Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) has increased tremendously over the past decade. In the Surface Mount Technology (SMT) area, the integration of the design and manufacturing activity is hampered by the lack of sufficient, in-depth manufacturing knowledge among the PCB designers. Also, the heuristic nature of manufacturing knowledge has resulted in the lack of widespread in-depth process knowledge.

The research described focuses on the design and development of a knowledge based methodology which can be used to assist the design engineer in the surface mount PCB assembly domain. The rules relate primarily with the solderability, cleanability and reflow aspects of the design. An Object Oriented Programming (OOP) methodology is used in the development of the system. The OOP framework allows for structured and modular development and implementation of the knowledge based system. It allows for the easy maintenance and update of the software along with the integration of knowledge bases and databases. The system has been partitioned into three major components - the user interface, the update mechanism along with the inference engine, and the database management utility.

An important feature of this research has been the focus on updateability of the system with respect to data and knowledge (rules). The logic or the rules within the system have been developed in an updateable format. The calculations required during the firing of the rules have been handled by dynamic linked libraries (dll) - a concept unique to the Microsoft (MS)- Windows environment. The entire system has been developed in the MS-Windows 3.1 operating system using the C + + language supported by the Borland C + + 3. 1 compiler. The database manipulation functions have been handled by Code Base 5.0 libraries.


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