kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Kaspar Emanuel <kaspar.emanuel@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Kevin,

On 21 December 2016 at 18:10, Kevin Bortis <kevin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> As Clements also noted, these values change very fast nowadays. At my
> workplace I have a library of around 4000 pysical components that I
> "try" to manage. As an example, I have a sensor chip which changed 3
> times, in the last 2 years the value of the Manufacturer field,
> because of mergers. It is even common that the orderable part number
> change in such a process. In the example above, Motorola split away
> the semiconductor business in to the spin offs ON Semiconductor and
> Freescale. The later got acquired by NXP last year and next year it
> will already be absorbed into Qualcomm.
>

I think the right approach is to append a new MFN+MPN combo when the part
becomes available under a new name. What was once true is always true and
you might still be able to find the part under the old name. If you would
like you could remove it too though this isn't really about how to manage
the info, just to find a common place to put it.

The second problem is, that
> the info i.MX6 or NE555 is almost useless. Almost all modern
> semiconductors are available in different packages and packaging
> options. If you go to the page
> http://www.ti.com/product/NE555/samplebuy everyone see what I mean.
> Even when the footprint is defined it is not clear what kind of
> temperature range etc. you intend to use. So the field should look
> more something like
>
> (property "MPN" "Texas Instruments" "NE555PSR")
>

Yes, that is more precise. The example was more to show where the fields
could go in the file format.