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Commonly used PCB Design Components, your favorites requested

Hello everyone,

As a designer of a PCB / Schematic Design tool I am continually asked for more libraries. However, except for a few exceptions I am finding it exceedingly difficult for anyone to give me up there "list" of most common or useful components.

We (PCB123) are getting ready to create thousands of new schematic symbols and PCB footprints (land patterns) but we would greatly appreciate the communities input to help us put this list together. PCB123 is used by all technology / experience levels from Tube amps to High Speed RF Designs.

I will be continually monitoring this group as well as a forum I have created specifically for this process:

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We will be releasing a whitepaper that opens up our library format to third-party developers that will make it easy create new symbols and footprints. We are also open to partnering with other developers such as

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to integrate with PCB123.

Any and all feedback will be appreciated.

Thank you,

Todd Clifton, PCB123 Product manager

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Reply to
MrWizard
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I use Protel for schematic and PCB design. Based on my experience, I suggest that your programs should have easy-to-use library editors, so that the user can make his own parts.

Alhtough I have been using Protel for many years, I find I usually have to make new schematic parts and PCB footprints for almost every job I do. (I do work on a wide variety of projects - I expect many people will use a smaller variety of parts, and will soon get everything they need built.)

There are so many different parts currently available, and more introduced every day, that we can't (or shouldn't) expect any CAD vendor to have everything in the standard libraries, as long as the package comes with a reasonable selection of common parts - resistors, capacitors, transistors, 74xx TTL logic, 78xx voltage regs, etc...

Protel does come with a large library, but I often find it quicker to make a part myself, rather than seach through all the libraries to see if it already exists.

--
Peter Bennett VE7CEI 
email: peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca        
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Reply to
Peter Bennett

I can re-iterate that. Not everyone is continually laying out PC style motherboards, memory planes and the like. For many products the ability to produce a custom part is almost imperative - a quick look has shown that I have (admittedly gained over a goodly number of years) 16 versions of the bog standard LM317T . Twelve have been product-specific forms used in volume consumer products the other four have been extensively used in all sorts.

Reply to
R.Lewis

Instead of creating thousands of symbols, create a powerful and easy to library editor. Make it possible to edit the part directly in the schematic or at least shuffle the pins around. Have a look how Orcad has done it and don't do it that way. It is a peace of crap. I should know, I use it. ( the devil you know etc..)

Ditto for footprints. Make sure that the pad array generator is full alphanumeric and works in imperial and metric.

Regards,

Boris Mohar

Got Knock? - see: Viatrack Printed Circuit Designs

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Reply to
Boris Mohar

Something I would like would be a 'library sharing' web page. Someone creates a symbol. The symbol looks good? Share it.

I once tried to do this with SPICE models, creating a big "database" to be put online but I couldn't go on, because of lack of time.

The problem would be the various software packages... (SPICE models are universal)

[]s 
--
Chaos Master®, posting from Brazil.
"Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I don\'t think 
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                                          -- Anonymous

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Reply to
Chaos Master

One of EasyPC's good points is the ease of creating components- it positively encourages the creation of a whole sequence (e.g. it's easy to produce the whole series 2-4-6-8-10 etc in a family of connectors). It has its faults- like the padout must have at least as many pads as the schematic symbol, and you can't assign one schematic pin to multiple pads- but I've never felt the need to go hunting for components.

Paul Burke

Reply to
Paul Burke

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