kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[László Monda <laci@xxxxxxxx>]

Chris & Andrew,

You're both welcome to publish your findings regarding your design
decisions.  I believe it'd be worthwile to peer-review and discuss
different approaches.

I consider CircuitHub the best solution so far.  I think Dropbox
integration is its best feature but its user interface never seemed
intuitive to me and I'm not in peace with its basic principle - I
really think that allowing every user to upload their own libraries is
a recipe for disaster.  Having 10 different kinds of 74HC595s, half of
which is broken is not good for anyone.

A powerful and user-friendly parametric library and footrprint
generator would be so much useful to have.
http://www.compuphase.com/electronics/kicadlibrarian_en.htm is by far
the best implementation of this concept.
http://kicad.rohrbacher.net/quicklib.php also nails the idea even
though I think its user interface is terrible.

For one-off parts maybe it'd useful to have something like CircuitHub
but only if there'd be a set of parts approved by librarians
(administrators of the site).  Without librarians this approach seems
to lead to chaos.

I'd be interested in developing a web-based library and footprint
generator eventually and maybe being a librarian by time.  So far I've
created http://mondalaci.github.io/dxf-to-svg-to-kicad-pcb-converter/
which solves a different problem but I believe it demonstrates the
power of a very intuitive web user interface that just works.  This
could be done for footprints, too.

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 12:35 AM, Chris Morgan <chmorgan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Andrew.
>
> Can I email you what I have when it's ready for first review? Then maybe we
> can iterate and discuss as you mentioned? I'd really like to get your
> feedback before putting anything out for wide distribution.
>
> Chris
>
>
>
> On Aug 7, 2013, at 6:21 PM, Andrew Seddon <andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I'd just like to extend an offer I made to Chris.
>
> I've been working on a library creation/management solution full time for a
> couple of years now so have a pretty good grasp of the problem. If anybody
> is interested in pursing this I would be happy to take you through the
> design decisions/trade-offs we made, which might act as a good starting
> point, and perhaps highlight some of the things that could be done
> differently (we tried a lot of different stuff). Happy to
> Skype/Hangout/Phone etc.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 9:39 PM, Chris Morgan <chmorgan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> It's good that you mentioned kicadcloud.com, I hadn't spotted that
>> yet. I did receive email from Andrew @ circuithub and I asked some
>> questions about API and other details. There may be potential to
>> collaborate with them on the API.
>>
>> I'm putting together a write up of the problem, the possible
>> online/cloud (although I really think that term is over used) solution
>> and some implementation ideas. I'll try to follow up here in a few
>> days once I have something that is enough to be beyond just some guy
>> sending email to the kicad developers list. My initial email was to
>> see if anyone else might be on board with the idea and to start to
>> gather some details before doing all of that extra work.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 3:49 PM, László Monda <laci@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > Chris,
>> >
>> > Not sure whether you've heard of https://circuithub.com/ or
>> > http://www.kicadcloud.com/ but they're certainly related even though
>> > none of them seem terribly useful to me at the moment.  Maybe some of
>> > these sites expose some webservice APIs - Could be a good way to
>> > start.
>> >
>> > On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 1:40 AM, Chris Morgan <chmorgan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> Hello.
>> >>
>> >> Sites like http://www.kicadlib.org/ are great for sharing libraries
>> >> but I was thinking that having integrated online library sharing could
>> >> better distribute the work while making it easier to share and use
>> >> parts. A user could add add trusted sources to their remote libraries,
>> >> contribute new parts, vote on parts etc.
>> >>
>> >> Thoughts? It would probably take a bit of effort to spec out and
>> >> implement things, I was thinking of an indiegogo or kickstarter
>> >> approach to fund the work.
>> >>
>> >> Chris
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > László Monda <http://monda.hu>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> --
> Andrew Seddon
> Co-founder CircuitHub
>
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>
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-- 
László Monda <http://monda.hu>