kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Lorenzo Marcantonio <l.marcantonio@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 23 Sep 2010, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:

> Inheritance.  hmmm.  Why not just *copy* symbol by symbol and make each
> copied symbol into a part-specific component in a new project specific
> library.

I agree. More simple to use and less complex to implement, can't be
a bad thing :D

> But we are moving in the right direction by really thinking about what
> we do.   The heavy library is a wish, I don't think anybody will ever be
> able to keep up with the new stuff hitting the market.  It is way too

It simply can't exist, not even the big vendor can do this (well, maybe
a vendor which lives selling libraries). And anyway (excluding stuff
with more than 80 pins) you draw a part in 15 minutes when you need it.

Given the 'thinking time' I need to properly use some component, drawing
the symbol is a small period of time (exercise: design a power supply
and tell me what % of the time you lost drawing the switcher IC:D)

For footprints (packages) that's another thing, but, excluding some
exotic component (like DirectFETs and PowerSOs) these are JEDECed anyway
and can be dynamically generated.

> A simpler set of ambitions/goals is to simply get the parts correct that
> you intend to use on a specific board.  And I even struggle with that.

I'm curious, why are you struggling?

> Is there any value in having a project specific library that is more
> tightly bound to the project?  Or is a personal library good enough?  I

For me no... When I need a component that's not already in a library
I simply draw it and put in the right system library. So in the next
board I can use it: I never encountered a component *only* for a board,
and since my assembly facility have to stock it for production it's
better to reuse it for the next projects too, if possible.

> actually think it might be worth discussing putting a project specific
> library *within* the project, say for example within the schematic.
> This fully embraces the use case behavior.  It also centralizes the
> place where you might fill in the things needed to make a good BOM.
> Each unique part is in there, and then each unique part can be
> instantiated from there into the schematic and it's reference designator
> changed, nothing more.

Technically there would be no need for 'libraries' since anyway they're
searched in order. You could just build a big database with *all* the
stuff inside (and a good search facility): that's what orcad's CIM does
IIRC. Libraries are for browsing, not searching IMHO.

--
Lorenzo Marcantonio
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