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Octopart announcement about parts libraries - will it support CS?

lamabrew

I received an email from Octopart announcing that they're making all of Altium's libraries available:

 

...Our parent company, Altium, has built up a huge database of high-quality schematic symbols, footprints, and 3D models for electronic parts to be used in circuit board design.

However, this content has long been exclusively available to users of Altium Designer.

This spring, we’ll be unleashing those hundreds of thousands of symbols, footprints, and 3D models onto Octopart and making them available to everyone free of charge...

 

It also included a survey, which among other things asked what tool you used. Designer and Circuitmaker were included, but Circuitstudio was conspicuous in its absence. Given that Altium owns Octopart this seems like an odd omission? OTOH it seems like CS can import AD libraries so this is perhaps a non issue - though it would be great if the components could be fetched from inside of CS without bouncing out to a browser, etc.

Presumably the libraries will be editable so when the right variant isn't available you can fix what needs fixing and get on with life instead of having to create almost every part from scratch? (I know you're supposed to be able to follow some contorted procedure with Vault to do this but it doesn't always work)

Can anyone from Element 14 comment on the upcoming Octopart libraries and CS support? Any time frame? The email was strangely silent on schedule.

(I for one will be very happy to not have to fight with Vault ever again...there's no way Octopart could come up with something more useless than Vault, right?)

Thanks for any advice/info

Brewster

  • 0

    Hi Brewster,

     

    Thank you very much for pointing this out, we've added CircuitStudio to the survey so it doesn't distract from our great product!

     

    The library format for Altium Designer is exactly the same as CircuitStudio, so look at it as CircuitStudio is 100% compatible with Altium Designer SchLib, PcbLib, IntLib files. In other words, CircuitStudio uses Altium Designer format libraries.

     

    CircuitMaker was mentioned because it has a special community library and users will wonder if they're invited.

     

    But most importantly, CircuitStudio is very much our focus and Altium's fully committed to it. The omission was only because it is fully compatible with Altium Designer, which is a good thing :-).

     

    Best regards,

     

    James Harriman

    Altium

  • 0 in reply to jamesharrimanaltium

    Thank you for stating that CircuitStudio is "very much our focus and Altium's fully committed to it."  However, I am not encouraged by the lack of communication with the CircuitStudio product with regards to software updates and future strategy.  I think the community agrees (see post the long running post about future update 1.5???) that the fact there is absolutely NO mention of a future software update means that whatever you do with vaults and libraries is meaningless because the core product itself needs many bugs to be fixed.  My company has recently allowed our support license to expire because we don't see that the product is being supported.  Whereas the package we have been using for quite a few years, Eagle, is now owned by Autodesk and has had major software enhancements and improvements continuously since they acquired it.  I expect in the next year or two that they will have surpassed the functionality of CircuitStudio by leaps and bounds.

     

    So until there is actual results seen that the product is being supported and improved upon, we will not be proceeding to pay for the product going forward.

  • 0 in reply to jstrautman

    I feel the same .  My maintenance ends tomorrow and I will not be renewing unless I see a roadmap for updates/proposed improvements.

  • 0 in reply to jamesharrimanaltium

    Hi James,

     

    Thanks for the info. I wonder if you could elaborate:

    • Will the Octopart libraries appear "inside" of CS like other libraries or do we go to the Octopart website and download something
    • Will the ability to search based on parametric information be present or will we need to know a part number to see if "something" is in the library?
    • If download something is the answer to above is what we download a single component or a library of similar parts (from the same manuf? different manuf?)
    • Once downloaded can we edit the part to match what is needed and/or is it going to be easy to copy to edit it? Or is it going to "phone home" for updates like Vault does and undo changes?
    • OTOH if it doesn't always check for updates is there a way to see that parts we downloaded have an update?
    • When will this be available? Days/weeks/months?