Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

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Sigh. I don't need yet another plugin for my generic parts--that you're going to try to monetize on me eventually if you achieve lock in.

Let me be blunt. I don't need extensions or features to my PCB tools. Certainly not "Yet Another Database Frontend(tm) You Can Rent".

I my tools to fscking WORK.

I need a tool that runs, fast, on Windows, Linux, and even OS X.

I need bug fixes for the features that they actually have.

I need a tool that lets me script things in a modern programming language.

I need an autorouter that doesn't suck. This will never happen because our algorithms don't like to work with PCB limitations of small numbers of layers and obstacles that penetrate multiple layers.

ALL the PCB software tools are buggy piles of garbage because the amount of money in that industry is now fixed. Charitably: everybody is trying to extract rent instead of innovate. Uncharitably: nobody actually in development actually knows how the board designers use their tools anymore.

If you want to go chase a field, go chase Cadence, Mentor and Synopsys up into the real EDA market where algorithms matter. Creating $10000-level tools that can do actual VLSI design to take advantage of the fact that transistors are stupidly cheap in volume would kick off the custom silicon revolution everybody has been promising.

Actually our parts library is free and will always be free for designers. As an EE, I'm committed to this. We launched with this vision in October '13 and haven't wavered. Tens of thousands of hardware designers already use it, so if we wanted to switch to that approach, we would have done it by now. We do have Premium features for things that we can't give away for free (ex: on-demand requests for things like complicated connectors) but otherwise we have not wavered.

Please read the Show HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html. They say: "Be respectful. Anyone sharing work is making a contribution, however modest."

Your comment is a mixture of dismissiveness and helpful (though perhaps tangential) information. It would be much better if you took out the dismissiveness.

Sorry, you are correct. My post was far too dismissive. He accidentally tripped over a hot button of mine and it was not his fault. Mea culpa.

As a power user and as an executive manager, I am extremely frustrated to see yet another company creating a "part database" (we have more than enough of these, thanks, and they don't actually solve a problem that a user actually has) rather than tackling ANY of the actual technical problems in the space.

However, your point is well taken. My apologies.

I understand your frustration having used EDA software, and worked in software development on these tools. However, we set out to build an interoperable content repository rather than yet another EDA tool.

First, with regards to not needing another parts database: when I was leading the marketing of an EDA tool, designers would often tell me that they didn't need yet another new feature in the tools - they needed content so they could actually be productive with the tools (rather than spending hours making the content before they could even start designing).

I would hear this over and over when I went to technical events, tradeshows, through our feedback systems, etc. If you search HackerNews, you'll also see many people citing the same need (top comment here): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8329373

Existing parts solutions in the space are of dubious quality (lack of standards, quality issues) and are often only solving bits and pieces. Designers would tell me they didn't trust them at all, so they would end up making their own models from scratch. This is one of the reasons large companies hire whole teams and dedicated librarians to create CAD models.

We thought what if we could provide this data more systematically, in a way that brought standardization, interoperability, & transparency to design content, that we could help the entire industry, especially small to mid-size companies that don't have dedicated librarians.

This content today is symbols, footprints, and 3D models, but we plan to expand to other forms of content, such as SPICE models and eventually even larger interoperable reference designs built on vetted, trusted data.

Please don't assume the OP is male or not solving technical challenges. She's a YC founder recently profiled in a technical magazine (PCB Design - see: http://www.iconnect007.com/index.php/article/100587/).

> Please don't assume the OP is male or not solving technical challenges. She's a YC founder recently profiled in a technical magazine (PCB Design - see: http://www.iconnect007.com/index.php/article/100587/).

1) Press coverage does not automatically imply either vision or competency. See: Theranos.

2) Do not assume that I do not have the bonafides to critique properly just because I am willing to have my rudeness pointed out. I've probably been fighting with EDA tools longer than she has been alive. And I ran a group which had a budget of more than $70 million for EDA tools.

I assure you I have very strong opinions about EDA tools that are backed up by very hard won experience.

And one of the many of those opinions is that not once did any engineer with experience ever say "Gee, we really need somebody else to manage our parts or footprints." TO A PERSON they all said "We'll do it. Anybody else will screw it up."

So, quite certainly, I have enough vision of the field to deem it "not a technical challenge". You can feel free to disagree, but you're going to have to bring some experience or data to convince me.

And, in case you think I'm being unfair, I can assure you that I ripped several layers of upper managers at Altium a new one for buying Octopart instead of fixing their tool.

I agree, actually - we have every solved problem, solved 3 or 4 times (to varying degrees of quality), with zero interoperability and no vision. It's fun, yeah, but it actually makes sense to pay for a 10k tool if it does what OrCad, Altium or Mentor can do.

I figured the fastest way to solve it was to: 1) Get ridiculously rich 2) Donate 20 Million dollars to a foundation to build open source CAD tools of professional quality.

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