Greetings all, I am also new to Kicad and have struggled some with creating components. I have started using Kicad for designing professional PCBs as part of my consulting business and so far been quite impressed.
Unfortunately for several reasons I am not sure that the professional world would be enthusiastic to using open libraries. First, there is some issue of trust. If you buy a CAD system, you know who is somewhat liable if you mess up a design. I'm not sure a vendor would really back you up either. But if you download a part from the web, then you either have to take your chances that it's right or spend time checking. So it may not be too much of a time saver. Second, companies might not want to put their libraries out there since it essentially shows what parts they are using and could potentially give away their current designs. If there was a way to anonymously put parts online then that would be ok. Another point of contention is something the group I work with recently discussed. Several of us like to create our schematic symbols to look like the physical part, myself included. I think this allows me to build a schematic that then translates better into a PCB. You don't end up with a ratsnest of traces crossing each other that looked pretty on the schematic. Others like a functional schematic symbol. One of my coworkers goes this way and will split parts such as putting the memory/data bus of a micro as one section of the part, some of the ports as another section, more ports in another section, and the power on yet another section. His schematics seem to put different sections on different pages. He tried Kicad briefly and gave up when he ran into trouble making a very large multi section part. Of course, if we can persuade component manufacturers to create libraries and put them out there in the libraries, that would be wonderful. I do really hope that Kicad can continue to evolve and become a greater force in the professional world. The group I am working with has no standardization and different workers use Orcad, Eagle, gEDA, and Kicad. Regards, Doug Deeds Forthright Solutions --- In kicad-users@yahoogroups.com, "David Bourgeois" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:50:31 +0100, Hristo Antonov > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > Hi to all > > Kicad is really good CAD system with real professional look and feel , > > but what i think is missing for use from buisnes clients is integration > > of component libraries in DB and the creation of open online database > > libraries and the integration of the product with it. > > I join the others on this. I didn't use CAD tools much but already had to > create a few components. I'm willing to spend some more time to raise them > to quality standard for sharing. What we probably need are guidelines to > get something good and unified. I'm lacking experience in this field so > I've no idea what makes a good symbol/footprint or a bad one. > > Though Danilo and others did already a great job by sharing their libs, a > more official library is a good idea those that shared their libraries are > probably in a good position to help with this. Unification, > standardisation and a way to rassemble all users efforts towards a single > library would really help IMO. That would ba at least a way for simple > Kicad users to bring back value to Kicad as most of us don't have the > ability to dig into the code for improvements. > > David >
