Library Management Tool

Element 14 User wrote on Tue, 18 October 2011 09:54

I'm currently working on a library creation and management tool that

can be used with Eagle. This will make it much easier to create new

parts, reuse old ones and share libraries with others.

In what way will it make it easier to create parts, reuse old ones, and

share libraries above the native Eagle capabilities?  It seems creating

parts and reusing old ones is already pretty easy.  Sharing libraries with

others is more about common conventions than the actual sharing, so I'm

curious how you intend to address that too.

Frankly, this sounds like a answer wishing for a question, but I'm willing

to be convinced if you can show how I get something useful to me I don't

have now.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Am 18.10.2011 16:40, schrieb Olin Lathrop:

In what way will it make it easier to create parts, reuse old ones, and

share libraries above the native Eagle capabilities?

Thanks for that question: It would be a real help to get some

information about what is planned for this tool. In my experience, using

EXTERNAL tools for ANY software quite often requires LOTS of converting

etc., so the main benefit of such tools is often dramatically reduced,

which of course should be avoided.

  - WILL this be an external tool?

  - Or will it be some ULP that 'talks' directly with EAGLE?

  - Will it work on ALL three platforms or not?

  - What new functions will it introduce?

  - ...

Andreas Weidner

Thanks for responding.

- It's mostly web based, with an Eagle extension planned.

- There is an expedited process to extract; symbols, footprints and mechanics from datasheets to build a complete part model.

- Revision management, change history, variants etc.

- Crowd sourcing

I'm not ready for a public beta, however if you think this might help you out, i'd love to talk.

Thanks,

Andrew

Am 18.10.2011 17:58, schrieb Andrew Seddon:

- It's mostly web based, with an Eagle extension planned.

If this is a program that has NOTHING to do with EAGLE, the integration

into the EAGLE workflow will probably be hard to design in a usable way.

In order for Farnell to push EAGLE support, it would be sort of

counterproductive to spend lots of bucks into programming something that

does NOT work flawlessly with EAGLE (at least from MY point of view).

- There is an expedited process to extract; symbols, footprints and mechanics from datasheets to build a complete part model.

I cannot imagine how this could be achieved nicely, but perhaps I will

be in for a big surprise...

- Revision management, change history, variants etc.

These things SOUND nice, but if this would be a SEPARATE program, you

would again need to export the created libraries to EAGLE, where one

does either NOT have these functions, or have them in a DIFFERENT way,

so usability again might suffer.

Please don't misunderstand me: I nicely programmed library tool with

wonderful features might be quite a good idea. On the other hand,

EAGLE's library functions are not bad, either (I find them still the

best around), so your tool would need to have EXCELLENT EAGLE

integration to persuade EAGLE users to switch to such an unknown tool.

And why would Farnell WANT the users to switch to something else?

EAGLE's theirs now, so wouldn't it be more useful to try to INCLUDE the

wonderful new library features into EAGLE instead of creating a

completely new competitive tool?

- Crowd sourcing

What does this mean? I don't know that word.

Andreas Weidner

Andreas,

Thanks for your thoughts, you raise some interesting points.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing of parts data will avoid duplication of data entry.

Andrew

Element 14 User wrote on Thu, 20 October 2011 09:06

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing of parts data will avoid

duplication of data entry.

But as I said earlier, library sharing is much more about different

conventions than avoiding duplication of the small amount of effort it

takes to make a new part.

Is the crowd going to use the right text size and ratio for the silkscreen

layer that I want?  Will they add the tDocu text according to my rules?

Will they add the various attributes required by my BOM generation system?

Will they take the extra care like I do to make the symbol look nice and

intuitive in the schematic, or will they follow the same sloppiness used to

make the supplied (and useless) Eagle libraries?

I just don't see how you're going to overcome these problems.  I am willing

to be convinced but for that to happen, you need to explain how your system

will work, not just all the great things it will supposedly do.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

Element 14 User wrote on Thu, 20 October 2011 09:06

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing of parts data will avoid

duplication of data entry.

But as I said earlier, library sharing is much more about different

conventions than avoiding duplication of the small amount of effort it

takes to make a new part.

Is the crowd going to use the right text size and ratio for the silkscreen

layer that I want?  Will they add the tDocu text according to my rules?

Will they add the various attributes required by my BOM generation system?

Will they take the extra care like I do to make the symbol look nice and

intuitive in the schematic, or will they follow the same sloppiness used to

make the supplied (and useless) Eagle libraries?

I just don't see how you're going to overcome these problems.  I am willing

to be convinced but for that to happen, you need to explain how your system

will work, not just all the great things it will supposedly do.

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.