natashabaker

I'm seeing "connection timed out; no servers could be reached". Anyone else seeing that when trying to run the above command?

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.

Sure. The way it works is if a part is already in our library it's free and you can download unlimited models. If not you can get it in 24h with InstaPart, and then that model is included for everyone in the free library.

You are correct that we have heard from customers who subscribe that they want more than 5 (right now they don't accrue because it's an add on to the other features). We are considering making these special requests available via a credit system. Would something like that work? Approximately how many do you use per project and what is the complexity of the designs?

Great idea, thanks! Will definitely consider this as a next step.

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.

Hi Robert, thanks for this feedback. We'd definitely like to add a KiCad plugin next. About 10% of our users use KiCad so it's definitely a community we want to focus on.

Over the past few months, we've made a lot of changes to how parts are linked. In addition to no longer showing related parts (this is where a lot of confusion was), we have also added notifications when a part hasn't yet been validated. As a startup, our team is constantly improving this too!

In terms of 3D models, you can toggle to the 3D model tab to see an example of the 3D models we're starting to incorporate. Example here: https://www.snapeda.com/parts/ATMEGA328P-AU/Atmel/view-part/ (toggle to the 3D view). These are currently a premium feature, but our goal is to make these also free at some point too.

Dear HN community,

I posted last month about our startup SnapEDA which makes free symbols and footprints available in multiple design formats when we released InstaPart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12571200.

We just built new plugins so that you can search SnapEDA right inside your design tool and thought I'd post again to share it (hope that's ok with everyone). These new plugins are for Altium and Eagle. The plugins allow you to search models without having to leave your design environment.

This is a beta, so would love any feedback you might have. One thing on our roadmap is to add cloud-syncing of the libraries and user authentication right from the plugin. Would love to hear your thoughts on other features to add next!

As someone who has been in the PCB industry for the past decade, it has been fascinating to watch how quickly KiCad came out of nowhere and quickly gained adoption as soon as CERN started contributing. After spending years in the software development of capture/simulation/layout tools for PCBs, I have come to see that these tools are not easy to create and maintain. Most products in the market are the product of decades of work.

We added KiCad support for our libraries on SnapEDA about a year ago, and now it's the 4th most popular tool on there with about 10% using it (after Altium, Eagle, and OrCAD/Allegro). When we talk to KiCad users, many are startups. However, I recently spoke with an engineer at a major defense contractor who uses Mentor Expedition at work and KiCad outside of his job. This is a sophisticated engineer who has chosen KiCad over the many free options available in the market. I had the same experience with another engineer at a medical device company using Allegro at work, and KiCad on the side. KiCad may not be as fully featured as the others, but it's being chosen as the next best alternative to these high-cost tools.

I agree that the UX is very quirky but EDA tools in general (other than Altium) traditionally have quirky interfaces.

I'd also recommend checking out his poetry. His earlier stuff especially. This is a good place to start: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/2a/8c/98/2a8c980c4....

Check out Irving Layton as well (another Canadian poet/professor). Really good stuff, and clearly influenced Leonard Cohen's writing.

It's definitely fixed now.

Ah sorry we switched our email servers yesterday afternoon. Info@snapeda.com is back up and running, or you can also contact us through the chatbot in the lower right corner of the website.

Here's our motivation for that wording: We know how important verification is and we spent a ton of time building an automated verification system (still in Beta) that provides transparency into common issues with CAD models. It can uncover and display defects, such as the centroid not being at 0,0 which will cause issues with pick-and-place machines, eventually pin mapping issues as well. We were trying to find a way to succinctly communicate this focus & investment into verification technology which differentiates us from any other library in the market. Apparently that was not communicated well and we'll re-word to make this more clear. :-)

That's an excellent idea. Will talk to our developers and see if we can re-purpose it this way.

This terms of use was originally written for our free library. Basically the way the license works is that as soon as you use a model in your designs (Design Exception), there is no license; it becomes your IP. You can re-post the models online in small quantities so long as you provide attribution to the source (SnapEDA). For InstaPart, we haven't re-evaluated the license, but we're open to it if you have better ideas. All our InstaPart users are professionals who are simply using the models in their designs (ie. not re-posting to the Internet), and therefore the attribution is not an issue. The models immediately become part of their IP. Basically the motivation behind our license was to be as flexible as possible without encouraging people to scrape and re-post vast quantities of the library without attribution.

We get Fritzing requests occasionally so would like to include it eventually, but don't have a timeline for it right now. Basically we're prioritizing formats based on demand so if there's enough demand from Fritzing users, we'll speed it up.

Thanks for the feedback. It might make sense to remove the free trial then because the main feature in it is just parts requests which people can now test with this new InstaPart feature.

Re: Style - As a starting point we follow IPC-7351B for footprints and our own internal standard as outlined here: http://snapeda.com/standards. Over time we'd like to allow for more customization to account for different styles and preferences.

Re: Symbol styles - that's really interesting and is an awesome idea. Will think about how we can do this. Definitely have thought about storing user preferences. For example, some people like NC pins on symbols while others like them hidden.

Re: Open Source - Haven't thought about this side yet but will consider it. We have made open our API and maybe we can expand that to include the exporters.

Re: Faster turn - Anything available on the site already is obviously free and instantaneous. I think it's worth exploring with my team if we can do a faster turnaround on InstaPart. We definitely have ideas on how to do this. Our part creation is a mix of automated and manual work. The longest part of the process is verification. But again, hopefully eventually this stuff just all exists readily available without requiring a special request.

We'd love to work with distributors to help proliferate this content. And yes internally we prioritize development of content in bulk. But sometimes there's a model that is needed that is outside of our development efforts. This is where InstaPart fits in. It's an option to 'skip the queue' and get any model quickly if it's outside of the models we are prioritizing internally.

We haven't tested it yet but if Proteus supports P-CAD then you can try downloading an Altium format which we export currently to P-CAD file format. Let us know how it goes.

If you don't want to sign up for a subscription, you can purchase individual parts for the $29. Also, our free version is really powerful so if you're not in a rush, you can stick with that one. :-)

Very constructive, thanks. We recently installed the app (Intercom) and it has really helped provide a channel for feedback which we have then used to prioritize improvements. I'll talk to my team about reducing the number of pages the automated pop up shows up on though.

If you go to the Pricing tab you'll see links to buy the parts through popular North American and European distributors. This data is supplied via Octopart.

Yes, that's a very good point. Most of our users are professionals like you mentioned so I think this definitely merits design changes. Also, regarding iPhone, we aren't yet compatible on mobile (most of our users visit from their desktops where they download the files), but it should at least still be usable, so thanks again for letting us know. :-)

That's a great idea. Will add the ability to toggle to see dimensions as a feature in our roadmap.

Good to know. You can actually download unlimited 3D models with the Premium version ($99/month). It is custom 3D models that cost $79 for 24-hour turnaround, and $39 for 5-day turnaround. (Although symbols & footprints available on the site are free, 3D models are currently Premium only.)

Thanks for the feedback. Will share this with my team and see what we can do about a re-design of that.

I think you must have been on the 3D model tab, which cost more than the 2D. (The 2D models are $29 for InstaPart.) And if the parts are already available they're free. We'll figure out how to make this more clear... Thanks for the feedback

As for the social media aspect, good to hear that as well. I talk with my team and see if we can add an option to suppress that, or re-design that page.

Yes, exactly. It's for people designing custom PCBs. That includes people who have something prototyped on a Raspberry Pi/Arduino, etc. and want to migrate to a custom board that's ready for production (ie. to get cost, form factor down).

Thanks. Will fix this next time we deploy updates.

Yes. Here's an example of a part page: https://snapeda.com/parts/LTC6995HS6-1%23TRMPBF/Linear%20Tec...

On this page, you'll notice the following:

1. You can upvote or downvote the part 2. You can leave a comment on the part 3. We have automated algorithms that uncover common defects in parts on the Validations tab. This is a patent-pending technology we developed that we plan to expand further to include more checks.