Comment by natashabaker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by natashabaker | Hacker News Reader

Hi HN!

As a team of 10 electrical engineers at SnapEDA, we know how frustrating it is to gather all the data (like symbols & footprints) needed to make a circuit board. Although we’ve built up a large database on SnapEDA, there may be times when the part you need can’t be found.

That’s why today we’re launching InstaBuild! InstaBuild is based on the underlying technology we use internally to make parts, and we’re releasing it today as a free tool to the engineering community.

We used a computer vision framework that's a bit more sophisticated than OCR (which we also used) because we detect cell placement and table lines to properly extract data

Here’s how it works:

1. The tool extracts pin data from datasheets. It tries to understand the function of each pin (in/our/power, etc.), and then auto-configures the symbol based on our published symbol standards.

2. We then map the symbol to a verified, IPC-compliant footprint.

3. The part is ready to download to your desired PCB design software format (ex: Eagle, Altium, KiCad, Cadence, Mentor, etc.).

Would love to get feedback on where we should take this next. Thanks HN!

What I would really like to see if the IC manufacturer would release all the data necessary for integrating their part into the design. The data would include a

* spice model for simulation

* a schematic symbol for capturing it into a schematic,

* a PCB footprint for laying it out onto the artwork.

But that would mean that the CAD folks would have to agree on a data format, but I afraid hell would freeze over before that happens. /rant off. Great idea - keep up the good work.

Thanks for this, and that's a great idea.

Because there is no common format that all electronics CAD vendors support, we have created our own. We then export to the various PCB design software formats.

Here's an example of how we've worked with Vishay to make the symbols, footprints, and 3D models available in one place: https://www.snapeda.com/parts/SFH6319T/Vishay/view-part/. Please stay tuned for simulation models!

The format problem has been around ever since schematic design moved into the digital world. Surprise that nothing has even come close to a standard. Getting the IC manufacturer's support on your creation is a great step in the right direction. Does your symbols have the right attributes for the CAD tools do design rule checks and validation?

Hi yitchelle, as part of our creation standards, all of our symbols contain the right attributes for DRC checks. If you're interested, you can read our standards here: https://www.snapeda.com/standards/.

So ... if manufacturers don't do this, then what we need is a way to allow a community to contribute this kind of information.

Like a GitHub for electronic models, and related data.

Engineers can contribute their own models on SnapEDA. They are then available to download in all formats. However, for quality reasons, we create the vast majority of models.

Sounds good, but how open is this? Is it like GitHub, where source code is owned by the authors/community (and not by GitHub), or is everything you upload owned by SnapEDA?

Also, can other toolmakers openly access these libraries?

Everything uploaded is licensed under the Creative Commons with Design Exception upon download. This means engineers need to credit the source/author when reposting the content online, but as soon as it's integrated into a design it becomes the downloader's IP. This way, if you're working at a big company, you can license the product under the terms of your choosing.

That’s the last thing I’d trust, Joe Public creating device models. Leave that to the device modeling groups at the semiconductor companies.

We understand this concern which is why we build the vast majority of content.

We also work with component manufacturers to help them create or translate their content to various formats. Here's an example: https://www.snapeda.com/parts/4N32-X001/Vishay/view-part/.

User-generated content is supported due to popular demand, but we deprioritize it in favor of semiconductor-generated, or SnapEDA-generated content. We also have an automated verification checker that exposes the quality of UGC on each part page.

I’m talking about semiconductor models, not footprints or 3D CAD models.

> But that would mean that the CAD folks would have to agree on a data format

Or the data could just be released in a bunch of formats.

Not intended to diminish your awesome work, I had this idea and I am so glad someone else did and implemented it!

* Could find typos in schematics

* Extract operational parameters from apps notes and data sheets, schematic understanding

What I really want is to bring up pages of the PDF documentation for a specific trace in a design.

Given you have a semantic description of pads for a part, could you merge (union) those pads with another similar part with a different outline? I'd like to hedge my bets and design a PCB that can support two different microprocessor variants or different vendors op-amps.

Thanks. OCR isn't 100% accurate but does a pretty good job. So we recommend double-checking before generating. Is your second point to be able to re-use a symbol for another part in the same family but that uses a different package type?

I'd like to merge two footprints so I can make PCBs that are future proof.

This looks great!

Can a similar technology be used to extract part parametrics from the datasheet ? because if so we'll get much closer to the ideal chip/component search engine.

And do you know anyone working on that?

Yes for sure! Challenge there is standardization across datasheets in terms of which parameters are listed and how. Increasingly chip companies are seeing the need to make their data more accessible and standardized so I'm sure it will get easier.

For me, the most time-consuming part is drawing footprints for connectors and sockets. RJ-45 sockets and microSD sockets come to mind as my most memorable (footprint related) screwups.

We have a great product called InstaPart (https://www.snapeda.com/instapart) to help with that, or if it's already in our library you can download it free!

People on the mechanical keyboard community are much into building custom PBC. Check there:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/

(I for example, just default to hand-wire my keyb because was too much different and don't wanna learn how do a PBC from zero ;) )

Those are not mechanical keyboards. Those are just computer keyboards with slightly better key switches. This is a mechanical keyboard.[1]

[1] http://www.aetherltd.com/images/keyboard1med.jpg

>The part is ready to download to your desired PCB design software format

Here is where it's going to fail. How time consuming is this compared with just entering the part manually? If your product was integrated with the PCB design software then it may work.

We find that it saves at least 30 minutes for most parts, since it automatically configures the symbols, defines their electrical characteristics, completes the symbol-to-footprint mappings, and links them to verified footprints.

That being said, InstaBuild is just a small feature of SnapEDA, a website used by over 60,000 registered electrical engineers around the world to download ready-to-use symbols and footprints. Our goal is that InstaBuild will become obsolete as our database or ready-to-use models becomes comprehensive.

And yes! We do have plugins for PCB design tools available at https://www.snapeda.com/plugins.

Looks neat! What's the technology behind it? I'm asking in part for selfish reasons-- my side project in an entirely different domain involves analyzing orderly PDF files. Sometimes the PDFs have text data in them, sometimes not.

Hello I'm the developer behind this tool. We use OpenCV for the computer vision portion (i.e. breaking the table up into the proper cells) and Tesseract OCR for the optical character recognition. Both tools are open source and have pretty wide adoption.

http://opencv.org/ https://opensource.google.com/projects/tesseract

>more sophisticated than OCR

it miss recognizes 0/2 and generates letters in pin number column which should only contain numbers on non bga parts in the demo video

Reply on news.ycombinator.com