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Show HN: InstaPart – Build circuit boards faster with instant parts

309 points by natashabaker 10y ago

natashabaker 10y ago
Dear HN Community, I wanted to introduce our startup SnapEDA to the HN community. We recently completed Y Combinator, and have been quiet about the platform while we've been improving it. With that said, we’d love to get feedback from the HN community! Our goal is to build a canonical library for making circuit boards: one trusted, centralized place to get digital models. These digital models include PCB footprints, schematic symbols, and 3D models. The library exports to a growing set of popular EDA tools: EAGLE, Altium, KiCad, Cadence OrCad/Allegro (Beta), & Mentor PADS (Beta). The library is free because we believe in making this data widely accessible to enable innovation. The purpose of this new feature, InstaPart, is to give designers an option to "skip the queue" and get a part quickly if it doesn't yet exist in the free library. Once that part is made, it is then made available for the entire community to download for free. Growing the library is a top area of focus, so we hope to eventually render the InstaPart feature obsolete and just have everything available natively. :-) In terms of standards, all new libraries are being made to IPC, and we also source models by partnering with component manufacturers. To ensure quality, we have an automated verification checker on each part page that provides a pass/fail result on common manufacturing issues that we plan to expand with additional checks. Thanks HN! Natasha
- justinlaing 10y ago
  Awesome added service! :)
- MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
  This is something that should exist, and I hope you can find ways to finance it sustainably. What are your plans?
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    We plan to work with component manufacturers to make sure their parts are well-represented on SnapEDA. We also have Premium versions for users who need more functionality. You can learn more at https://www.snapeda.com/pricing https://www.snapeda.com/pricing.
    - makomk 10y ago
      "You can sign up for a 10-day free trial of SnapEDA premium. During the trial period, you can cancel any time in your Account Settings. After the trial ends, you will be charged $297 ($99/month, billed quarterly)." This stinks of dark patterns and maximizing the amount you can hit people who forget to cancel for before they notice. It's rather unlikely that someone would actually want to pay quarterly at the higher monthly rate.
      - natashabaker 10y ago
        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. :-)
        akiselev 10y ago
        That doesn't answer the dark pattern concern at all and you're just dodging the issue. When people hear trial they think "free time to make my decision" not "10 days for $300" which is what this will be for anyone who forgets to cancel (hint: any EE on a deadline but I guess you know that). This is just predatory.
        natashabaker 10y ago
        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.
        10y ago
- Eridrus 10y ago
  Could you explain this for someone without any hardware experience?
  - mastax 10y ago
    So you're designing a little board in KiCad and you want to add an LPC1768 to it to do some processing. You need to get a schematic representation and a physical footprint of the part into your CAD software. You could spend an hour carefully reading the datasheet and recreating all of the pins and landing pads, but this is the 21st century! You look at the manufacturer's website, SparkFun's part library, google a bit, and you can't find premade files for the part. So you go on InstaPart and pay $29 and someone at SnapEDA does the work for you and then releases the files for free. Now they're listed on the SnapEDA database for anyone to use, and you know that they're going to be correct.
    - DiThi 10y ago
      IMHO this should be the description in the landing page. With this (and the new KiCad) I'm considering going back to PCB design.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    Imagine you wanted to build a spaceship out of lego but first needed to mould each block. If you wanted to build a circuit board, you would need a digital model of each component, and these are often made from scratch because designers can't find one readily available. Likely someone at a nearby company, or even a nearby cubicle, has already made that model. So this wasted effort hinders innovation and is a huge productivity drain. SnapEDA makes a huge database of these models available that hardware designers can drag-and-drop into their designs.
  - analog31 10y ago
    Just adding a bit to what the others have said, you could almost think of the "parts" in a CAD program as being akin to the templates in a header file for a C library, i.e., they provide a symbolic representation plus an interface definition that are joined together. In the case of electronic CAD, a "part" is what the part looks like in the schematic diagram, typically a box with numbered and labeled connections, and a representation of its physical dimensions and the location of its connections. Somebody has made sure that the physical details are correct, and that pin 23 on the schematic is pin 23 on the physical board. Creating these parts is kind of a form of costly drudge work for designers, and errors in those parts can be hard to correct when your prototype doesn't work for some mysterious reason.
- bramv 10y ago
  Lookw great! I used many footprints from SnapEDA before. In many cases I prefer to draw the schematic symbol myself though. I like organizing the pins in a way it fits nicely in the schematic. It takes a bit more time to start but it makes the schematic cleaner and easier to maintain.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    That's awesome to hear! Would love to chat at some point and learn more about your preferences with symbols. We'd definitely like to see if we could incorporate more user preferences there.
- extrapickles 10y ago
  I've had to use a few parts that claimed to follow a standard footprint, but where subtly off. Another part I've used if you read the datasheet carefully you ended up with a completely different footprint than what first glance would suggest which is my biggest problem with upverters part concierge as they helpfully "fix" my footprint to the incorrect one. Will we be able to comment on the footprints or leave reviews on how well that footprint worked?
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    Yes. Here's an example of a part page: https://snapeda.com/parts/LTC6995HS6-1%23TRMPBF/Linear%20Technology/view-part/ 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.
    - chamakits 10y ago
      Oh wow, I hadn't thought of this, but it's so obvious! I personally haven't dealt with hardware since college, but if you pull this off, you will be the go to source for every single student working on a project or lab that's wondering why the part they just bought is not working according the datasheet. It would have saved me many hours, and that's just as a student, can't imagine for those that depend on those datasheets professionally. Wish you the best of luck, this sounds very promising.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      Shiiiiiiiiiiit, this is awesome. I spend quite a bit of time trying to find components, and you never know whether the footprint is correct or whether you're in for an unpleasant surprise. Thanks for this! I'm especially loving the fact that you do KiCAD exports.
    - Animats 10y ago
      "Upvote" should mean more than "I liked it". It's too easy to get likes. Something that says "I used this footprint to make a board, and the part soldered into place OK" would be helpful.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  This is awesome, I'll have to see if I can import them into Proteus (labcenter electronics EDA package)
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    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.
- soneil 10y ago
  I hope this is constructive, but that chat invitation on every freaking page drove me off the site. By time I'd logged in and searched for two parts, the incessant chirping and popups of Clippy were too much.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    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.
    - CamperBob2 10y ago
      You're targeting engineers and advanced hobbyists. Don't distract us. If we need help, we'll find the right icon to click on, don't worry.
    - simcop2387 10y ago
      One of the ways I've seen it done, and done it at previous companies is to not present it to every user on page view. Pop it up for only 10%, even if you have a button/link/menu to bring it up for everyone. That way you can solicit feedback while still gaining a lot of the benefits of having live interaction. It'll also still give you some insight to where the chat is most useful, but it'll take longer to gather useful data on what pages it gets used the most.
      - sockopen 10y ago
        I'm cool with a cookie and an [X] or a Close button on warnings / notifications / advertisements / popups / music controllers so you know that I have seen it, and do not want it displayed to me again.
    - soneil 10y ago
      I think a callout the first couple of times is fine (still not my preference, but I think this is a cultural thing - the US style "how can I help you" in retail rubs me up the wrong way too). But I think after that it'd be very much preferable to taper off - especially the sounds. As another commenter said, know your audience - your icon is obvious and descriptive, so we don't need to be told 20 times what it does.
- Fiahil 10y ago
  > and verified using proprietary patent-pending verification technology Is "proprietary patent-pending technology" really necessary? It's the kind of phrasing seen on uninteresting product trying to pretend they're interesting (ex: "Our Proprietary Patent-Pending Technology Makes Our Product So Great This Single Mom Can't Even Talk About It. Discover Now For $99.99")
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    Especially since "Patent Pending" is basically code for "Screw the marketplace of ideas, pay us."
  - Kliment 10y ago
    Indeed, it's an awesome product but being so excited about patents causes an instinctive disgust reaction, at least in my case.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    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. :-)
- funkaster 10y ago
  Is there any way to get support? I've been having problems trying to login or do anything since yesterday, but your support (or contact) email is bouncing...
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    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.
    - funkaster 10y ago
      still bouncing... I'll try the chatbot. You might want to remove the email from your page. It's very frustrating to try to contact a company, but all the info on their website points to a non-working email :(
      - natashabaker 10y ago
        It's definitely fixed now.
zbjornson 10y ago
Not an EE Am I correct that you replace this lengthy process? https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/designing-pcbs-smd-footprints https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/designing-pcbs-smd-foot...
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Yes! That's our first area of focus!
- foldr 10y ago
  It's not really as lengthy as all that for small parts. Eagle has a horrible interface, but with a bit of practice it can be done quite quickly.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  That is the process, yes, but it's not really that lengthy. You can usually just add the first pin and then copy/paste the rest in the row really quickly.
  - rfrank 10y ago
    Yeah, for the most part library stuff is quick. Some tools let you pattern place the pins and plop them all down at once. High pin count parts like FPGAs and connectors with weird footprints are the big time sinks.
    - akiselev 10y ago
      Weird footprints are really the only time consuming part with modern EDA software. Tools like Altium have templates, footprint generators, and features for bulk editing symbols and footprints so all you do is create a quick Excel spreadsheet with pin number and formulas for x and y (especially easy for FPGAs and processors with pins in a grid). You copy paste that spreadsheet into Altium and you're done. It takes me less than 10 minutes to manually draw a footprint for a 500+ pin processor this way.
      - 10y ago
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transfire 10y ago
Nice.
legulere 10y ago
Your terms and conditions site has a third paragraph twice: https://www.snapeda.com/about/terms/ https://www.snapeda.com/about/terms/
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Thanks. Will fix this next time we deploy updates.
wyager 10y ago
Awesome! Making footprints is the single most annoying part of PCB design. Looks great!
LAMike 10y ago
Is this where people should go to make a production level PCB's for products that are prototyped on something like a raspberry pi? Or is it serving a different market?
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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).
  - nojvek 10y ago
    Interesting. Is there a guide for someone who's not a PCB designer to get his raspi project as a custom board ? I want to make a raspi remote controller that controls IR devices around my house via a web app. This would be a perfect, but I have no idea how to get it into a PCB design.
    - Kliment 10y ago
      Hey, I do this kind of stuff. Email me and I'll help you get started.
necdetalpmen 10y ago
Looks great, someone had to do this :-) Can't wait to give it a try!
necdetalpmen 10y ago
Sounds great, someone had to do this :-) Can't wait to try!
pmorici 10y ago
Seems like an interesting service. I'm kind of confused by the site though. On the landing page it says, "Get any schematic symbol and PCB footprint delivered in 24 hours. Just $29." Then I did a search for a part and clicked request and, after signing up for an account, it said that to get it in 24 hours I need to pay $79 and $29 was for 5 days service. I also somehow ended up on a page at one point that said that you could request any part for free. So which is it really? I also found the social network aspect of the site off putting particularly since there was no mention of that and then after I signed up for an account to give the request a part service a try I see my user name plastered on the sites front page in a feed of recently signed up users and deactivating my account doesn't remove that.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.
honkhonkpants 10y ago
I think your footprints should be shown with dimensions, because before I drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on a run of PCBs, I'm going to have to check your footprints to make sure they are correct, and that could actually take me longer than drawing them from scratch.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  That's a great idea. Will add the ability to toggle to see dimensions as a feature in our roadmap.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Yes, a ruler on the footprint page would be great.
Tom1971 10y ago
I just created an account with the LinkedIn login option. When I get back to the front page, it shows for everybody to see with my full name that I just joined snapeda. Why???
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Will share this with my team and see what we can do about a re-design of that.
  - Tom1971 10y ago
    At the very least, you should have allowed new users to change the screen name first, and inform them of this. I assume you want commercial users to use your service as an alternative for DigiKey etc. Some prefer to stay under the radar in everything they do. Second remark: for all components that I select, the 2D view shows: Th P The rest falls off the screen on an iPhone 6. I'm guessing it wants to say "this part is not available" or something. You need to test drive your website on more browsers.
    - natashabaker 10y ago
      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. :-)
FreedomToCreate 10y ago
As a designer, this looks like a great convenience since making a symbol and footprint usually takes a half hour on average. The 3D feature is the most useful part as a proper model takes much longer but at $79 dollars it could be expensive for people like me who design boards with many ICs and and unique components. With that said, in a very time constrained project with a lot of new components which we have no symbols for, if I could select and buy everything I need in a packaged deal, that would be appealing.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.)
Nanite 10y ago
This is actually quite useful, as an occasional user of a variety of layout packages, once in a while run I into that one rare part which isn't in a library, and end up wasting an hour finding the specs/measuring the part and figuring out how the component editor works.
compumike 10y ago
Shocking that it's 2016 and the component manufacturers aren't providing this data free and online, right next to the datasheet link. Then again, after working with these companies, it's not so surprising! Congrats on the launch.
- Animats 10y ago
  I'm surprised this is a retail business. Doing this in conjunction with Digi-Key, Mouser, or Hamilton/Avnet would seem to make more sense. They already distribute the data sheets for the parts they sell. Also, it would be far cheaper to make footprints if you did them in bulk, working your way though long catalogs of similar parts. Maybe the retail thing is to get some credibility so they can deal with the major distributors.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    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.
- Karliss 10y ago
  Agree. Imagine if c/c++ library developers didn't provide header files and everyone had to generate them from documentation or symbol listing.
- amelius 10y ago
  Well, the difficult part still remains to get the actual devices! And in the quantities you need them in, and before you need to ship! Having those symbols for circuit design is nice, but really a trivial problem in comparison.
- jpindar 10y ago
  Some of them do, for instance: http://www.microchip.com/development-tools/resources/cad-cae-symbols http://www.microchip.com/development-tools/resources/cad-cae... But you're right, it would make sense for them all to do so.
madengr 10y ago
Why? Making schematic symbols and PCB footprints is not time consuming, and at least you'll have the proper paste mask. Altium has an IPC footprint generator wizard, and 3Dcontentcentral has lots of user contributed parts in STEP format.
- wott 10y ago
  > Why? Making schematic symbols and PCB footprints is not time consuming Whaaaaaat? o_O
  - Animats 10y ago
    I was just making some yesterday. It's time consuming if you use KiCad, which has a draw program with a UI from the 1990s. I could have drawn a footprint in Autodesk Inventor's sketch mode in a tenth of the time, and without having to use a calculator to compute distances from the data sheet drawing. (CAD program UIs are really hard to do well. The big companies have it figured out at last, but the technology hasn't filtered down to open source yet.)
  - madengr 10y ago
    The pre-canned libraries will never have the typical customization needed for PCB. The paste mask aperatures need sizing depending on what stencil thickness you use. Need vias under the QFN belly pad for RF or heat sinking purposes. Do those need tenting on the back side? They also may need to avoid the paste aperatures? How about solder mask relief? Copper defined pads or mask defined pads? Are the part centroids on the correct layer? Also the keep out regions, and 3D model? What I'm getting at is the footprints are more than just copper pads; that's the easy part. They will still require lots of customization, so you are better of just doing them yourself and building up your own library. Now having correct schematic symbol pinouts for that 1024 ball BGA. That is useful. PCB library vendors have come and gone over the 20+ years I have been an EE. Also, as someone else mentioned, the schematic symbols are defined by if you have a logical (digital) or physical (RF) schematic. For example, pin spacing should be such that bypass caps can be squeezed between. Even data sheets have multiple symbols for the same part in the same data sheet; Linear Technology is a good example of this. Anyone doing PCB professionally will make their own symbols and footprints. A hobbyist using free layout software won't pay $29 for a footprint.
sandGorgon 10y ago
you should producthunt this!
BrooklynRage 10y ago
Bookmarked this site. The database seems super useful. I have mixed feelings about the custom footprint service -- I've worked with ~900-pin BGA SoC-type parts, and paying $30 to do that would be a no brainer, but paying the same for a 8-pin LDO would be a tougher sell -- maybe scale prices with part complexity? The tougher sell to me is trust / verification of the InstaPart models before the community can vote them up or down. For most teams that I've been on, the most time-consuming part isn't really the pinout generation, but rather the checking of large parts (often 2 engineers checking pin-by-pin to ensure that footprint matches data sheet). I'd be much more comfortable using it if you outlined how pinouts are verified before sending them out to the customers. I hope this works out! Making footprints is a huge PITA, and I'd love to be rid of it.
- mng2 10y ago
  Agreed on the verification aspect. And what happens when an error makes it through and your customer has to scrap $xK worth of boards? I work at a $largeco with dedicated footprints people and a long DFM pipeline, and footprint errors still get through from time to time. When there's tens of thousands of dollars riding on a board turn, you're still going to check it yourself.
zbrozek 10y ago
I'm a professional hardware engineer, and doing this kind of work is something I do frequently and begrudgingly. Having this kind of service available will be a huge help. Some thoughts: - Who writes the style guide? How do you make aesthetic decisions? - Will you support multiple symbol styles? Would it be possible to upload stylesheets or specially annotated schematics and then regenerate already-extant parts in that style? - Is there any intention of making the file writers open-source? Altium, in particular, has a stupid and annoying file format and it would be a gift to the community to be able to write good PcbLib and SchLib files. It would make it easy for me to write a linting and style-casting tool. - Is there any chance of bringing down the latency, possibly with the application of more money? My rule of thumb is that it's worth spending about a hundred dollars to save myself an hour. A typical smallish library part takes me about five or ten minutes if I have to do both schematic and footprint, so waiting a day isn't really attractive at any price. But if I could throw money at you to get a result turbospeed, that'd be worthwhile.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Re: Style - As a starting point we follow IPC-7351B for footprints and our own internal standard as outlined here: http://snapeda.com/standards 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.
- akiselev 10y ago
  I second the speed requirement. The most I've ever spent is an hour on making a schematic symbol and two hours for a footprint, both when I was very inexperienced with Altium and using a ~500 pin part. Now that I'm comfortable with Altium's IPC templates and batch editing features (you can pull up a copy pastable spreadsheet that allows you to quickly edit all shapes on a footprint without the UI), even the most complex parts take under a half hour. $29 is nothing for 20 min of work but depending on your workflow, waiting a day is unacceptable. I can rarely predict the kind of part swapping that will happen before PCB layout so footprints are the first step that has to happen in the first few days after schematic capture. Since the footprints are a blocking concern for part placement, I don't have much patience especially on a deadline since I can just draw all the parts myself while waiting for the first footprint to come in. The other problem is that the vast majority of professional engineers check the footprints meticulously before fabrication even if they made the footprint for a previously successful project. It only takes a day or two and must be done regardless so it removes a lot of the added value InstaPart can provide. Although most of this doesn't apply to the more hobbyist market, they generally aren't willing to pay $29 for anything let alone a single footprint.
jazzychad 10y ago
Very cool! I can't seem find any links to click on to actually order parts from manufacturers when I find a part - e.g. https://www.snapeda.com/parts/MCP23017-E/SP/Microchip/view-part/ https://www.snapeda.com/parts/MCP23017-E/SP/Microchip/view-p... There's the whole section at the top about availability and average price, but no link to go buy it? In addition to the InstaPart revenue, are you also going to make money with affiliate sales to parts sites (a la Octopart)?
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.
  - jazzychad 10y ago
    Ah, I completely didn't see that tab... Then perhaps some usability feedback; maybe create links of the already orange text in the upper left hand box (the "Average Price") and have it auto-choose the Pricing tab below and scroll the page there? Make it super easy to find :)
new299 10y ago
What license are the footprints provided under? I couldn't see this on the main page?
- new299 10y ago
  ok found it: "Individual CAD symbols and footprints on SnapEDA are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA) with the Design Exception 1.0. This license allows designers to use CAD files downloaded from SnapEDA for commercial and personal use free of charge, and make derivative works. If CAD files, or derivatives thereof, are shared publicly, attribution must be given to the source (SnapEDA and the original author, as applicable), as outlined by the requirements of the license. Use of the SnapEDA website is governed by the Web Site Terms and Conditions of Use. In short, you cannot use the SnapEDA website for the purpose of sharing the content on the Internet or within an EDA tool, but otherwise you are free to use the files for designs." That's too restrictive for something I'm paying for. Particularly at 29USD a footprint. I'd love it if there was an open option here. Particularly if it integrated with Kicad well and I could automatically upload my footprints.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    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.
IgorPartola 10y ago
I mostly use Fritzing. Will it be supported at some point?
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.
nzjrs 10y ago
What's the liability situation if you deliver an incorrect footprint?
timecop 10y ago
Anyone who cant spend a few minutes in their EDA tool of choice to create a symbol or footprint and instead chooses to pay $29 here should not have a job (or a hobby) making electronics.

309 points by natashabaker 10y ago

Dear HN Community, I wanted to introduce our startup SnapEDA to the HN community. We recently completed Y Combinator, and have been quiet about the platform while we've been improving it. With that said, we’d love to get feedback from the HN community! Our goal is to build a canonical library for making circuit boards: one trusted, centralized place to get digital models. These digital models include PCB footprints, schematic symbols, and 3D models. The library exports to a growing set of popular EDA tools: EAGLE, Altium, KiCad, Cadence OrCad/Allegro (Beta), & Mentor PADS (Beta). The library is free because we believe in making this data widely accessible to enable innovation. The purpose of this new feature, InstaPart, is to give designers an option to "skip the queue" and get a part quickly if it doesn't yet exist in the free library. Once that part is made, it is then made available for the entire community to download for free. Growing the library is a top area of focus, so we hope to eventually render the InstaPart feature obsolete and just have everything available natively. :-) In terms of standards, all new libraries are being made to IPC, and we also source models by partnering with component manufacturers. To ensure quality, we have an automated verification checker on each part page that provides a pass/fail result on common manufacturing issues that we plan to expand with additional checks. Thanks HN! Natasha

justinlaing 10y ago
Awesome added service! :)
MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
This is something that should exist, and I hope you can find ways to finance it sustainably. What are your plans?
- natashabaker 10y ago
  We plan to work with component manufacturers to make sure their parts are well-represented on SnapEDA. We also have Premium versions for users who need more functionality. You can learn more at https://www.snapeda.com/pricing https://www.snapeda.com/pricing.
  - makomk 10y ago
    "You can sign up for a 10-day free trial of SnapEDA premium. During the trial period, you can cancel any time in your Account Settings. After the trial ends, you will be charged $297 ($99/month, billed quarterly)." This stinks of dark patterns and maximizing the amount you can hit people who forget to cancel for before they notice. It's rather unlikely that someone would actually want to pay quarterly at the higher monthly rate.
    - natashabaker 10y ago
      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. :-)
      - akiselev 10y ago
        That doesn't answer the dark pattern concern at all and you're just dodging the issue. When people hear trial they think "free time to make my decision" not "10 days for $300" which is what this will be for anyone who forgets to cancel (hint: any EE on a deadline but I guess you know that). This is just predatory.
        natashabaker 10y ago
        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.
        10y ago
Eridrus 10y ago
Could you explain this for someone without any hardware experience?
- mastax 10y ago
  So you're designing a little board in KiCad and you want to add an LPC1768 to it to do some processing. You need to get a schematic representation and a physical footprint of the part into your CAD software. You could spend an hour carefully reading the datasheet and recreating all of the pins and landing pads, but this is the 21st century! You look at the manufacturer's website, SparkFun's part library, google a bit, and you can't find premade files for the part. So you go on InstaPart and pay $29 and someone at SnapEDA does the work for you and then releases the files for free. Now they're listed on the SnapEDA database for anyone to use, and you know that they're going to be correct.
  - DiThi 10y ago
    IMHO this should be the description in the landing page. With this (and the new KiCad) I'm considering going back to PCB design.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Imagine you wanted to build a spaceship out of lego but first needed to mould each block. If you wanted to build a circuit board, you would need a digital model of each component, and these are often made from scratch because designers can't find one readily available. Likely someone at a nearby company, or even a nearby cubicle, has already made that model. So this wasted effort hinders innovation and is a huge productivity drain. SnapEDA makes a huge database of these models available that hardware designers can drag-and-drop into their designs.
- analog31 10y ago
  Just adding a bit to what the others have said, you could almost think of the "parts" in a CAD program as being akin to the templates in a header file for a C library, i.e., they provide a symbolic representation plus an interface definition that are joined together. In the case of electronic CAD, a "part" is what the part looks like in the schematic diagram, typically a box with numbered and labeled connections, and a representation of its physical dimensions and the location of its connections. Somebody has made sure that the physical details are correct, and that pin 23 on the schematic is pin 23 on the physical board. Creating these parts is kind of a form of costly drudge work for designers, and errors in those parts can be hard to correct when your prototype doesn't work for some mysterious reason.
bramv 10y ago
Lookw great! I used many footprints from SnapEDA before. In many cases I prefer to draw the schematic symbol myself though. I like organizing the pins in a way it fits nicely in the schematic. It takes a bit more time to start but it makes the schematic cleaner and easier to maintain.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  That's awesome to hear! Would love to chat at some point and learn more about your preferences with symbols. We'd definitely like to see if we could incorporate more user preferences there.
extrapickles 10y ago
I've had to use a few parts that claimed to follow a standard footprint, but where subtly off. Another part I've used if you read the datasheet carefully you ended up with a completely different footprint than what first glance would suggest which is my biggest problem with upverters part concierge as they helpfully "fix" my footprint to the incorrect one. Will we be able to comment on the footprints or leave reviews on how well that footprint worked?
- natashabaker 10y ago
  Yes. Here's an example of a part page: https://snapeda.com/parts/LTC6995HS6-1%23TRMPBF/Linear%20Technology/view-part/ 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.
  - chamakits 10y ago
    Oh wow, I hadn't thought of this, but it's so obvious! I personally haven't dealt with hardware since college, but if you pull this off, you will be the go to source for every single student working on a project or lab that's wondering why the part they just bought is not working according the datasheet. It would have saved me many hours, and that's just as a student, can't imagine for those that depend on those datasheets professionally. Wish you the best of luck, this sounds very promising.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    Shiiiiiiiiiiit, this is awesome. I spend quite a bit of time trying to find components, and you never know whether the footprint is correct or whether you're in for an unpleasant surprise. Thanks for this! I'm especially loving the fact that you do KiCAD exports.
  - Animats 10y ago
    "Upvote" should mean more than "I liked it". It's too easy to get likes. Something that says "I used this footprint to make a board, and the part soldered into place OK" would be helpful.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
This is awesome, I'll have to see if I can import them into Proteus (labcenter electronics EDA package)
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.
soneil 10y ago
I hope this is constructive, but that chat invitation on every freaking page drove me off the site. By time I'd logged in and searched for two parts, the incessant chirping and popups of Clippy were too much.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.
  - CamperBob2 10y ago
    You're targeting engineers and advanced hobbyists. Don't distract us. If we need help, we'll find the right icon to click on, don't worry.
  - simcop2387 10y ago
    One of the ways I've seen it done, and done it at previous companies is to not present it to every user on page view. Pop it up for only 10%, even if you have a button/link/menu to bring it up for everyone. That way you can solicit feedback while still gaining a lot of the benefits of having live interaction. It'll also still give you some insight to where the chat is most useful, but it'll take longer to gather useful data on what pages it gets used the most.
    - sockopen 10y ago
      I'm cool with a cookie and an [X] or a Close button on warnings / notifications / advertisements / popups / music controllers so you know that I have seen it, and do not want it displayed to me again.
  - soneil 10y ago
    I think a callout the first couple of times is fine (still not my preference, but I think this is a cultural thing - the US style "how can I help you" in retail rubs me up the wrong way too). But I think after that it'd be very much preferable to taper off - especially the sounds. As another commenter said, know your audience - your icon is obvious and descriptive, so we don't need to be told 20 times what it does.
Fiahil 10y ago
> and verified using proprietary patent-pending verification technology Is "proprietary patent-pending technology" really necessary? It's the kind of phrasing seen on uninteresting product trying to pretend they're interesting (ex: "Our Proprietary Patent-Pending Technology Makes Our Product So Great This Single Mom Can't Even Talk About It. Discover Now For $99.99")
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Especially since "Patent Pending" is basically code for "Screw the marketplace of ideas, pay us."
- Kliment 10y ago
  Indeed, it's an awesome product but being so excited about patents causes an instinctive disgust reaction, at least in my case.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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. :-)
funkaster 10y ago
Is there any way to get support? I've been having problems trying to login or do anything since yesterday, but your support (or contact) email is bouncing...
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.
  - funkaster 10y ago
    still bouncing... I'll try the chatbot. You might want to remove the email from your page. It's very frustrating to try to contact a company, but all the info on their website points to a non-working email :(
    - natashabaker 10y ago
      It's definitely fixed now.

zbjornson 10y ago

Not an EE Am I correct that you replace this lengthy process? https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/designing-pcbs-smd-footprints https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/designing-pcbs-smd-foot...

natashabaker 10y ago
Yes! That's our first area of focus!
foldr 10y ago
It's not really as lengthy as all that for small parts. Eagle has a horrible interface, but with a bit of practice it can be done quite quickly.
StavrosK 10y ago
That is the process, yes, but it's not really that lengthy. You can usually just add the first pin and then copy/paste the rest in the row really quickly.
- rfrank 10y ago
  Yeah, for the most part library stuff is quick. Some tools let you pattern place the pins and plop them all down at once. High pin count parts like FPGAs and connectors with weird footprints are the big time sinks.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    Weird footprints are really the only time consuming part with modern EDA software. Tools like Altium have templates, footprint generators, and features for bulk editing symbols and footprints so all you do is create a quick Excel spreadsheet with pin number and formulas for x and y (especially easy for FPGAs and processors with pins in a grid). You copy paste that spreadsheet into Altium and you're done. It takes me less than 10 minutes to manually draw a footprint for a 500+ pin processor this way.
    - 10y ago

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transfire 10y ago

Nice.

legulere 10y ago

Your terms and conditions site has a third paragraph twice: https://www.snapeda.com/about/terms/ https://www.snapeda.com/about/terms/

natashabaker 10y ago
Thanks. Will fix this next time we deploy updates.

wyager 10y ago

Awesome! Making footprints is the single most annoying part of PCB design. Looks great!

LAMike 10y ago

Is this where people should go to make a production level PCB's for products that are prototyped on something like a raspberry pi? Or is it serving a different market?

natashabaker 10y ago
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).
- nojvek 10y ago
  Interesting. Is there a guide for someone who's not a PCB designer to get his raspi project as a custom board ? I want to make a raspi remote controller that controls IR devices around my house via a web app. This would be a perfect, but I have no idea how to get it into a PCB design.
  - Kliment 10y ago
    Hey, I do this kind of stuff. Email me and I'll help you get started.

necdetalpmen 10y ago

Looks great, someone had to do this :-) Can't wait to give it a try!

necdetalpmen 10y ago

Sounds great, someone had to do this :-) Can't wait to try!

pmorici 10y ago

Seems like an interesting service. I'm kind of confused by the site though. On the landing page it says, "Get any schematic symbol and PCB footprint delivered in 24 hours. Just $29." Then I did a search for a part and clicked request and, after signing up for an account, it said that to get it in 24 hours I need to pay $79 and $29 was for 5 days service. I also somehow ended up on a page at one point that said that you could request any part for free. So which is it really? I also found the social network aspect of the site off putting particularly since there was no mention of that and then after I signed up for an account to give the request a part service a try I see my user name plastered on the sites front page in a feed of recently signed up users and deactivating my account doesn't remove that.

natashabaker 10y ago
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.

honkhonkpants 10y ago

I think your footprints should be shown with dimensions, because before I drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on a run of PCBs, I'm going to have to check your footprints to make sure they are correct, and that could actually take me longer than drawing them from scratch.

natashabaker 10y ago
That's a great idea. Will add the ability to toggle to see dimensions as a feature in our roadmap.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  Yes, a ruler on the footprint page would be great.

Tom1971 10y ago

I just created an account with the LinkedIn login option. When I get back to the front page, it shows for everybody to see with my full name that I just joined snapeda. Why???

natashabaker 10y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Will share this with my team and see what we can do about a re-design of that.
- Tom1971 10y ago
  At the very least, you should have allowed new users to change the screen name first, and inform them of this. I assume you want commercial users to use your service as an alternative for DigiKey etc. Some prefer to stay under the radar in everything they do. Second remark: for all components that I select, the 2D view shows: Th P The rest falls off the screen on an iPhone 6. I'm guessing it wants to say "this part is not available" or something. You need to test drive your website on more browsers.
  - natashabaker 10y ago
    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. :-)

FreedomToCreate 10y ago

As a designer, this looks like a great convenience since making a symbol and footprint usually takes a half hour on average. The 3D feature is the most useful part as a proper model takes much longer but at $79 dollars it could be expensive for people like me who design boards with many ICs and and unique components. With that said, in a very time constrained project with a lot of new components which we have no symbols for, if I could select and buy everything I need in a packaged deal, that would be appealing.

natashabaker 10y ago
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.)

Nanite 10y ago

This is actually quite useful, as an occasional user of a variety of layout packages, once in a while run I into that one rare part which isn't in a library, and end up wasting an hour finding the specs/measuring the part and figuring out how the component editor works.

compumike 10y ago

Shocking that it's 2016 and the component manufacturers aren't providing this data free and online, right next to the datasheet link. Then again, after working with these companies, it's not so surprising! Congrats on the launch.

Animats 10y ago
I'm surprised this is a retail business. Doing this in conjunction with Digi-Key, Mouser, or Hamilton/Avnet would seem to make more sense. They already distribute the data sheets for the parts they sell. Also, it would be far cheaper to make footprints if you did them in bulk, working your way though long catalogs of similar parts. Maybe the retail thing is to get some credibility so they can deal with the major distributors.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.
Karliss 10y ago
Agree. Imagine if c/c++ library developers didn't provide header files and everyone had to generate them from documentation or symbol listing.
amelius 10y ago
Well, the difficult part still remains to get the actual devices! And in the quantities you need them in, and before you need to ship! Having those symbols for circuit design is nice, but really a trivial problem in comparison.
jpindar 10y ago
Some of them do, for instance: http://www.microchip.com/development-tools/resources/cad-cae-symbols http://www.microchip.com/development-tools/resources/cad-cae... But you're right, it would make sense for them all to do so.

madengr 10y ago

Why? Making schematic symbols and PCB footprints is not time consuming, and at least you'll have the proper paste mask. Altium has an IPC footprint generator wizard, and 3Dcontentcentral has lots of user contributed parts in STEP format.

wott 10y ago
> Why? Making schematic symbols and PCB footprints is not time consuming Whaaaaaat? o_O
- Animats 10y ago
  I was just making some yesterday. It's time consuming if you use KiCad, which has a draw program with a UI from the 1990s. I could have drawn a footprint in Autodesk Inventor's sketch mode in a tenth of the time, and without having to use a calculator to compute distances from the data sheet drawing. (CAD program UIs are really hard to do well. The big companies have it figured out at last, but the technology hasn't filtered down to open source yet.)
- madengr 10y ago
  The pre-canned libraries will never have the typical customization needed for PCB. The paste mask aperatures need sizing depending on what stencil thickness you use. Need vias under the QFN belly pad for RF or heat sinking purposes. Do those need tenting on the back side? They also may need to avoid the paste aperatures? How about solder mask relief? Copper defined pads or mask defined pads? Are the part centroids on the correct layer? Also the keep out regions, and 3D model? What I'm getting at is the footprints are more than just copper pads; that's the easy part. They will still require lots of customization, so you are better of just doing them yourself and building up your own library. Now having correct schematic symbol pinouts for that 1024 ball BGA. That is useful. PCB library vendors have come and gone over the 20+ years I have been an EE. Also, as someone else mentioned, the schematic symbols are defined by if you have a logical (digital) or physical (RF) schematic. For example, pin spacing should be such that bypass caps can be squeezed between. Even data sheets have multiple symbols for the same part in the same data sheet; Linear Technology is a good example of this. Anyone doing PCB professionally will make their own symbols and footprints. A hobbyist using free layout software won't pay $29 for a footprint.

sandGorgon 10y ago

you should producthunt this!

BrooklynRage 10y ago

Bookmarked this site. The database seems super useful. I have mixed feelings about the custom footprint service -- I've worked with ~900-pin BGA SoC-type parts, and paying $30 to do that would be a no brainer, but paying the same for a 8-pin LDO would be a tougher sell -- maybe scale prices with part complexity? The tougher sell to me is trust / verification of the InstaPart models before the community can vote them up or down. For most teams that I've been on, the most time-consuming part isn't really the pinout generation, but rather the checking of large parts (often 2 engineers checking pin-by-pin to ensure that footprint matches data sheet). I'd be much more comfortable using it if you outlined how pinouts are verified before sending them out to the customers. I hope this works out! Making footprints is a huge PITA, and I'd love to be rid of it.

mng2 10y ago
Agreed on the verification aspect. And what happens when an error makes it through and your customer has to scrap $xK worth of boards? I work at a $largeco with dedicated footprints people and a long DFM pipeline, and footprint errors still get through from time to time. When there's tens of thousands of dollars riding on a board turn, you're still going to check it yourself.

zbrozek 10y ago

I'm a professional hardware engineer, and doing this kind of work is something I do frequently and begrudgingly. Having this kind of service available will be a huge help. Some thoughts: - Who writes the style guide? How do you make aesthetic decisions? - Will you support multiple symbol styles? Would it be possible to upload stylesheets or specially annotated schematics and then regenerate already-extant parts in that style? - Is there any intention of making the file writers open-source? Altium, in particular, has a stupid and annoying file format and it would be a gift to the community to be able to write good PcbLib and SchLib files. It would make it easy for me to write a linting and style-casting tool. - Is there any chance of bringing down the latency, possibly with the application of more money? My rule of thumb is that it's worth spending about a hundred dollars to save myself an hour. A typical smallish library part takes me about five or ten minutes if I have to do both schematic and footprint, so waiting a day isn't really attractive at any price. But if I could throw money at you to get a result turbospeed, that'd be worthwhile.

natashabaker 10y ago
Re: Style - As a starting point we follow IPC-7351B for footprints and our own internal standard as outlined here: http://snapeda.com/standards 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.
akiselev 10y ago
I second the speed requirement. The most I've ever spent is an hour on making a schematic symbol and two hours for a footprint, both when I was very inexperienced with Altium and using a ~500 pin part. Now that I'm comfortable with Altium's IPC templates and batch editing features (you can pull up a copy pastable spreadsheet that allows you to quickly edit all shapes on a footprint without the UI), even the most complex parts take under a half hour. $29 is nothing for 20 min of work but depending on your workflow, waiting a day is unacceptable. I can rarely predict the kind of part swapping that will happen before PCB layout so footprints are the first step that has to happen in the first few days after schematic capture. Since the footprints are a blocking concern for part placement, I don't have much patience especially on a deadline since I can just draw all the parts myself while waiting for the first footprint to come in. The other problem is that the vast majority of professional engineers check the footprints meticulously before fabrication even if they made the footprint for a previously successful project. It only takes a day or two and must be done regardless so it removes a lot of the added value InstaPart can provide. Although most of this doesn't apply to the more hobbyist market, they generally aren't willing to pay $29 for anything let alone a single footprint.

jazzychad 10y ago

Very cool! I can't seem find any links to click on to actually order parts from manufacturers when I find a part - e.g. https://www.snapeda.com/parts/MCP23017-E/SP/Microchip/view-part/ https://www.snapeda.com/parts/MCP23017-E/SP/Microchip/view-p... There's the whole section at the top about availability and average price, but no link to go buy it? In addition to the InstaPart revenue, are you also going to make money with affiliate sales to parts sites (a la Octopart)?

natashabaker 10y ago
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.
- jazzychad 10y ago
  Ah, I completely didn't see that tab... Then perhaps some usability feedback; maybe create links of the already orange text in the upper left hand box (the "Average Price") and have it auto-choose the Pricing tab below and scroll the page there? Make it super easy to find :)

new299 10y ago

What license are the footprints provided under? I couldn't see this on the main page?

new299 10y ago
ok found it: "Individual CAD symbols and footprints on SnapEDA are licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA) with the Design Exception 1.0. This license allows designers to use CAD files downloaded from SnapEDA for commercial and personal use free of charge, and make derivative works. If CAD files, or derivatives thereof, are shared publicly, attribution must be given to the source (SnapEDA and the original author, as applicable), as outlined by the requirements of the license. Use of the SnapEDA website is governed by the Web Site Terms and Conditions of Use. In short, you cannot use the SnapEDA website for the purpose of sharing the content on the Internet or within an EDA tool, but otherwise you are free to use the files for designs." That's too restrictive for something I'm paying for. Particularly at 29USD a footprint. I'd love it if there was an open option here. Particularly if it integrated with Kicad well and I could automatically upload my footprints.
- natashabaker 10y ago
  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.

IgorPartola 10y ago

I mostly use Fritzing. Will it be supported at some point?

natashabaker 10y ago
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.

nzjrs 10y ago

What's the liability situation if you deliver an incorrect footprint?

timecop 10y ago

Anyone who cant spend a few minutes in their EDA tool of choice to create a symbol or footprint and instead chooses to pay $29 here should not have a job (or a hobby) making electronics.