To import a Sherlock project, select Import Project from the Main Menu. This will open the Import Project dialog. Here you specify a Project Name and click the Browse button to select the project file. Project Category is an optional field. (You may change the Project Category later by right-clicking the project folder in the Project Tree and selecting Project Properties.) Finally, click Import Project.

Depending on the size of the project file, the import may take a minute or so to load. During that time, a progress dialog will be displayed. Once the import is complete, the project will appear in Sherlock's Project Tree. For additional details on importing a Sherlock project, refer to Importing a Project in the Tutorial: Project Overview.

As mentioned earlier, you can import a variety of industry-standard file types into Sherlock. Simply click Project from the Main Menu and select one of the Import... options. This will open the dialog for the specific file type you chose. The Import IPC-2581 dialog is shown below as an example of the import interface. Click the Browse button to navigate to the file you wish to import. Notice the top field (A, below) displays the file path. The second field (B) displays the file name.

Other options in the Import Files dialog:

Once you have selected the file you wish to import, click the Scan Archive button. Sherlock will perform a preliminary scan of the selected file and display the list of import actions it will perform as shown below. To continue with the import, click the Import Archive button. If you do not wish to proceed with the import, you can click Reset. This will clear the file name and the results of the file scan so you can start over.

Each file type has its own import dialog with file-specific parameters. Special considerations for each file-type are contained in the sections that follow. For a detailed explanation of how to import a project, refer to these tutorials:

An IPC-2581 file is a text-based XML file containing the complete definition of the printed circuit card, such as the components, layers, BOM, etc. IPC-2581 files prior to revision B of the standard, end with a .cvg extension, and end with a .xml extension with revision B. Sherlock also supports having one of these files enclosed with a .zip file. If there is more than one matching file type found in the zip archive, only the first match will be processed. Note that some of the example files provided by the IPC-2581 Consortium are .zip files. However, these zip files also include ODB++ archives, and other formats and documentation used for comparison and reference to the contained IPC-2581 file. When using these files to import into Sherlock, the desired .cvg or .xml file should be first extracted from the archive to insure the correct IPC-2581 file is imported.

To import an IPC-2581 file, select the Import IPC-2581 Archive from the Project menu. This will display a dialog to allow the selection of the IPC-2581 file to be imported, along with additional options that allow for manual override of the project name and CCA name. By default, Sherlock will only bring in layers from the IPC-2581 file that Sherlock uses. The option Include Other Layers will tell Sherlock to bring in any layer found in the IPC-2581. These additional layers will appear in the Other Layers folder of the Layer Viewer.

After selecting the desired file to import and optionally changing any other options, click the Scan Archive button to begin the import process. The file will first be pre-processed, and a dialog named the Component Property Mapping dialog, like the following will be displayed:

The Component Property Mapping dialog is an important, but sometimes overlooked, dialog that allows you to map various component/part properties included in the IPC-2581 file to corresponding Sherlock property fields. Sherlock parses any BomItem description and BomItem textual characteristics found in the IPC-2581 file to produce this dialog. The item COMP_CLASS in this example was found and the value IC was an example value found in the file. If desired, the indicated Sherlock part property will be assigned the values found for COMP_CLASS associated with each part found. If the indicated Sherlock part property is not correct or the indicated IPC-2581 property doesn't apply, change the selection to the correct Sherlock part property or to the value of Ignore.

After you've reviewed the various properties and have decided that they are mapped appropriately, press the OK button to continue the import process.

After the part properties have been mapped the Import IPC-2581 Files dialog will display the complete list of data that can be extracted automatically from the archive, as shown here:

In this case, Sherlock has found a complete set of files, including package information, stackup data, board outline, drill holes and all the important layers. Additionally, because the Include Other Layers option was selected, it found five additional layers to import which are not used directly by Sherlock.

For ease of use and because of the larger size of IPC-2581 files, Sherlock will extract the XML that makes up each of the found items in the list of imported items above. Each will display as a separate XML file within Sherlock and properly associated to each layer within Sherlock.

Press the Import Archive button to start the import process, at which point the import dialog will close and the project navigation tree will be updated to include all the files being imported, as shown below. While each file is imported, the icon displayed next to the file will reflect a clock icon. Once complete, the appropriate file icon for the given file will be reflected. If any errors were generated while processing the files, then the file will be highlighted with an orange "?" icon.

At this point, the IPC-2581 file has been imported into Sherlock creating a new project containing a new circuit card. Project management can continue by reviewing part properties and various layers as detailed in Lesson 04 – Reviewing Part Properties and Lesson 05 – Layer Viewer of the Sherlock tutorial.

Many of the examples provided by the IPC-2581 Consortium also provide additional import types such as ODB++ for the examples to be used as a comparison. The ODB++ examples may also be loaded into Sherlock, see the ODB++ Project Creation tutorial more information. When doing so you might notice some discrepancies between an ODB++ version of a file and the IPC-2581 revision A and B versions of a file.

One such example appears with the test case 3 file used as an example in this user’s guide section. If you view the bottom component and solder mask layers in Sherlock you will notice that component U11 appears to be rotated differently than the soldermask layer, however in the ODB++ version of the same example, the rotation is correct.

IPC-2581defines rotation values as counter-clockwise as viewed from the top of the board. Mirroring is done across the Y-axis and is performed after rotation. If you right-click the comp.xml file in the Files section of the imported IPC-2581 file, you can select View File from the menu to see how this component is specified. Component U11 is found near the bottom of the file. As shown below, the component is rotated to the left or counter-clockwise 82.601 degrees, then mirrored across the Y-axis meaning that all X values are set to -X. Because component U11 is rotated incorrectly, the rotation may be fixed by changing the component rotation or mirror setting.

For comparison, the same component from the ODB++ archive is defined with a rotation of 277.4 and no mirroring. Rotation values in ODB++ are performed clockwise.

In the IPC-2581 specification, section 4.1 Content: FunctionMode shows a table of how various functions are supported between the different function modes and levels. Sherlock requires most items from revision A FULL mode or revision B USERDEF mode:

Sherlock supports most of the IPC-2581 specification, however there are some items which are not supported as Sherlock provides its own implementation for them or they are not required for use by Sherlock. The following tables indicate what is supported. This is not a meant to be a complete list but does cover most of the functionality that Sherlock normally provides.

Other Limitations When Importing IPC-2581 Files