5 ms·

Very nice! The state of electronics tooling has long been extremely bad - 99% of people who put a regulator into their schematic will want an appropriate input

Very nice! The state of electronics tooling has long been extremely bad - 99% of people who put a regulator into their schematic will want an appropriate input and output capacitor as the datasheet demands. 99% of people who put a microcontroller will want a crystal and a programming port and a reset pin pull-up. It's only because of closed source tools stuck in the stone age that the state of the art is to copy out of a PDF. And multiple people working on the same design and merging their changes? Forget about it! It'll be very exciting if we can move towards a more modular world, where designs can be composed.

napowderly 3y ago
For sure, we definitely subscribe to works out of the box / path most taken. We have been working on adding equations to our language so we can solve component values based on requirements like output current and ripple for a regulator to get cap values for example. I hope in the future our component models will capture a good fraction of the info you have to go to the datasheet for today.
moffkalast 3y ago
Yeah, trying to learn KiCad is worse than learning Blender. If JLCPcb made a simple online editor that sourced from available parts and integrated directly with their store they'd be running out of banks to put their money into.
- napowderly 3y ago
  They do have this, its called EasyEDA. In my experience its not as good as kicad and definitely not as good as the 'professional' tools like cadence and altium. Our tool does basically do that though! We have a big library of kicad components that can be used in your designs as well as an import just about any JLC component just using its JLCPN. We love their service, would love to see that model proliferated to other companies also, so hard to beat having parts available and in stock.
- wkipling 3y ago
  Kicad is not that difficult to use. Sourcing parts can be though.
- gedy 3y ago
  They do! EasyEDA, and have used it to make custom keyboard PCBs. It's pretty handy and I found the learning curve to be much easier than KiCAD, etc.
- brokensegue 3y ago
  I learned kicad fairly quickly. I've tried several times to learn blender and failed. Then again I'm bad at art.
- drunkonvinyl 3y ago
  this resonates. i will share that i'm trying out and having luck with flux.ai. it's not perfect, but for a small hobby project and someone with little experience and not getting far quickly in kicad, it works. i have a pcb in-hand from jlcpcb right now and it works. it also introduces some of the shared features discussed above. (i don't work for them, just looking for something that would let me do a fairly fast PoC)
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    Oh now this one is interesting, I've given it a short try and the UX is just on another level compared to the usual, I might actually be able to get something done with it. This is what EasyEDA should've been, not the terrible KiCad web clone that it is. For us hobbyists there's no point in investing years learning something proper like Altium because we won't ever be shipping to production or doing stupidly complex multilayer boards. We need the Tinkercad for PCBs, not Fusion360. Something that can be crude and oversimplified, but quick to use and also simple enough that even middle schoolers can learn it.
    - drunkonvinyl 3y ago
      i've even figured out how to create a component that didn't exist in their library - a lot of the manufacturers/related appear to provide the symbol, footprint and 3d files to recreate it on flux. this is one for example - https://www.flux.ai/centplaids0u/oki-78sr-51p5-w36-c-1480 https://www.flux.ai/centplaids0u/oki-78sr-51p5-w36-c-1480 - a 12v to 5v voltage regulator. got files from here: https://www.snapeda.com/parts/OKI-78SR-5/1.5-W36-C/Murata%20Power%20Solutions%20Inc./view-part/ https://www.snapeda.com/parts/OKI-78SR-5/1.5-W36-C/Murata%20.... Got it built into the board and it works! holy heck. hope it works for you!
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  They did and there's even tools to import their component library into Altium or Eagle.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Yeah, trying to learn KiCad is worse than learning Blender. I dunno. I've used others, and KiCad was no harder to start with than the others (Horizon, LibrePCB, Lepton/gEDA, some others I forgot). I asked for recommendations a week ago on HN for EDA products, and tried them all. You know which one I eventually settled on? The one with the most components (symbols + footprints). Turns out, features are nice (rules checker, etc) but not having to f*&^ing create my own symbols for a mass-produced part, then design the footprint for the same part is a huge timesaver.[1] For many of us non-professionals designing a board, the UI just isn't as big of an issue as having to create our own components. [1] At any reasonable hourly rate, having to create a library of just 1 component costs more than whatever you think you'll save with a slicker UI.
  - rowanG077 3y ago
    This. By FAR the most annoying thing of creating a simple PCB is dealing with symbols and footprints. Why the hell is this is not a solved problem.
    - delfinom 3y ago
      Because every CAD, which has traditionally been dominated by commercial solutions invents their own file format for lockin. On top of that semiconductor vendors don't want to hire people to draw symbols in every possible cad solution. So you instead have them release symbols in some preferred tool, maybe they also outsource to third party services like UltraLibrarian. There problem with the third party services is they do the laziest conversions possible between format using scripting and often do a horrible job.
      - lelanthran 3y ago
        > Because every CAD, which has traditionally been dominated by commercial solutions invents their own file format for lockin. This doesn't really explain why creators of new CAD programs (Horizon and LibrePCB are new) invent new data formats. We've seen time and time again, in every digital domain ever invented, that the most important thing is the dataset. It doesn't really matter how nice the library manager is if what it manages has limited availability - and no, asking for a community to pitch in and help with the duplicated work is not a solution. The solution is to pick the largest library and use its format.
crote 3y ago
> It's only because of closed source tools stuck in the stone age that the state of the art is to copy out of a PDF. Not really. KiCad is open-source and a very capable EDA suite, for example. The problem is that it's a really hard problem for which no one-size-fits-all solution exists. There's basically an infinite number of properties which are important when designing electronics, many of which will have to be nudged depending on your design. Capturing all that in a data format is virtually impossible, and any attempt to do so is likely to degrade into something unusual quite quickly once you get past the trivial stuff. In my experience reading it out of a PDF is usually not that big of a deal, once you get used to it. For things like schematics symbols and footprints there are data interchange formats available - and there's a pretty decent chance these days they'll be openly available for the part you are using. But they always contain mistakes, and I find it way faster to just roll my own from the PDF than to copy it ready-made from a 3rd party and fix the errors.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > The problem is that it's a really hard problem for which no one-size-fits-all solution exists. Not really, IME. Let's say I want a SMPS. Something basic, say 12-24v in 3.3v out at 1A. I can buy a module and solder it onto my PCB, or copy a reference design out of a PDF, or vendors like TI have tools like webbench to help me generate a custom design. The vendor wants to hand me a proven design and have me buy their chips. I want to be handed a proven design and know my project's going to work right first time. But no, the likes of Altium have got to have their vendor lock-in by making copy-and-paste absolutely as difficult as possible. There's no great skill or inventiveness in me drawing out the world's billionth SMPS design. I'm not "solving a hard problem" - it's drudgery. > and there's a pretty decent chance these days they'll be openly available for the part you are using. But they always contain mistakes, So you'd agree, then, that when a human copies from a PDF manually there's a substantial chance of them introducing errors? Are you and I not equally vulnerable to making such mistakes? Frankly I find it absurdly wasteful that the industry has transistors in the same package but with different pinouts and the 'solution' to keeping this stuff in order is... senior engineers checking junior engineers' work against PDFs manually.
stephen_g 3y ago
As an electronic design engineer, it just feels to me like these kind of things aren't really huge problems day-to-day... In terms of decoupling designs etc., the reason nobody has come up with a better solution is firstly that it doesn't actually take up enough time in the scheme of things to bother, and secondly that you often have to deviate. For variable regulators for example, the output capacitor (and inductor if it's not included in the device) are chosen based on output voltage, the switching frequency you choose, and sometimes other variables. You often want to deviate from the recommended circuit in the application notes for various reasons. I'd think of a circuit board production as more like putting together a magazine than working on a software codebase, where you'd have a bunch of people working on overlapping parts of the code. I mean even for a lot of boards we do (even quite complex ones) we'll just have one design engineer and one layout engineer, but for things where multiple people work on the schematic we just have people work on their own sheets and then somebody brings them together into the final design - kind of like where you might have an overall designer/editor that pulls a magazine together but individual people having put together individual articles. But it's pretty common that it would still be mostly laid out by a single engineer unless you're doing something extremely complex...
- mawildoer 3y ago
  We have some plans and atopile already supports some configuration regarding those deviations. There's a component selector which can choose resistors, caps, inductors etc... from a database of known components. Currently it's a free-for-all, but naturally we expect to be able to constrain this to a subset of components like "thing we already use at this company". That database means (once equations are also in) we'll be able to capture those requirements and change those output components depending on the scenario.

napowderly 3y ago

For sure, we definitely subscribe to works out of the box / path most taken. We have been working on adding equations to our language so we can solve component values based on requirements like output current and ripple for a regulator to get cap values for example. I hope in the future our component models will capture a good fraction of the info you have to go to the datasheet for today.

moffkalast 3y ago

Yeah, trying to learn KiCad is worse than learning Blender. If JLCPcb made a simple online editor that sourced from available parts and integrated directly with their store they'd be running out of banks to put their money into.

napowderly 3y ago
They do have this, its called EasyEDA. In my experience its not as good as kicad and definitely not as good as the 'professional' tools like cadence and altium. Our tool does basically do that though! We have a big library of kicad components that can be used in your designs as well as an import just about any JLC component just using its JLCPN. We love their service, would love to see that model proliferated to other companies also, so hard to beat having parts available and in stock.
wkipling 3y ago
Kicad is not that difficult to use. Sourcing parts can be though.
gedy 3y ago
They do! EasyEDA, and have used it to make custom keyboard PCBs. It's pretty handy and I found the learning curve to be much easier than KiCAD, etc.
brokensegue 3y ago
I learned kicad fairly quickly. I've tried several times to learn blender and failed. Then again I'm bad at art.
drunkonvinyl 3y ago
this resonates. i will share that i'm trying out and having luck with flux.ai. it's not perfect, but for a small hobby project and someone with little experience and not getting far quickly in kicad, it works. i have a pcb in-hand from jlcpcb right now and it works. it also introduces some of the shared features discussed above. (i don't work for them, just looking for something that would let me do a fairly fast PoC)
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Oh now this one is interesting, I've given it a short try and the UX is just on another level compared to the usual, I might actually be able to get something done with it. This is what EasyEDA should've been, not the terrible KiCad web clone that it is. For us hobbyists there's no point in investing years learning something proper like Altium because we won't ever be shipping to production or doing stupidly complex multilayer boards. We need the Tinkercad for PCBs, not Fusion360. Something that can be crude and oversimplified, but quick to use and also simple enough that even middle schoolers can learn it.
  - drunkonvinyl 3y ago
    i've even figured out how to create a component that didn't exist in their library - a lot of the manufacturers/related appear to provide the symbol, footprint and 3d files to recreate it on flux. this is one for example - https://www.flux.ai/centplaids0u/oki-78sr-51p5-w36-c-1480 https://www.flux.ai/centplaids0u/oki-78sr-51p5-w36-c-1480 - a 12v to 5v voltage regulator. got files from here: https://www.snapeda.com/parts/OKI-78SR-5/1.5-W36-C/Murata%20Power%20Solutions%20Inc./view-part/ https://www.snapeda.com/parts/OKI-78SR-5/1.5-W36-C/Murata%20.... Got it built into the board and it works! holy heck. hope it works for you!
fxtentacle 3y ago
They did and there's even tools to import their component library into Altium or Eagle.
lelanthran 3y ago
> Yeah, trying to learn KiCad is worse than learning Blender. I dunno. I've used others, and KiCad was no harder to start with than the others (Horizon, LibrePCB, Lepton/gEDA, some others I forgot). I asked for recommendations a week ago on HN for EDA products, and tried them all. You know which one I eventually settled on? The one with the most components (symbols + footprints). Turns out, features are nice (rules checker, etc) but not having to f*&^ing create my own symbols for a mass-produced part, then design the footprint for the same part is a huge timesaver.[1] For many of us non-professionals designing a board, the UI just isn't as big of an issue as having to create our own components. [1] At any reasonable hourly rate, having to create a library of just 1 component costs more than whatever you think you'll save with a slicker UI.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  This. By FAR the most annoying thing of creating a simple PCB is dealing with symbols and footprints. Why the hell is this is not a solved problem.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Because every CAD, which has traditionally been dominated by commercial solutions invents their own file format for lockin. On top of that semiconductor vendors don't want to hire people to draw symbols in every possible cad solution. So you instead have them release symbols in some preferred tool, maybe they also outsource to third party services like UltraLibrarian. There problem with the third party services is they do the laziest conversions possible between format using scripting and often do a horrible job.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > Because every CAD, which has traditionally been dominated by commercial solutions invents their own file format for lockin. This doesn't really explain why creators of new CAD programs (Horizon and LibrePCB are new) invent new data formats. We've seen time and time again, in every digital domain ever invented, that the most important thing is the dataset. It doesn't really matter how nice the library manager is if what it manages has limited availability - and no, asking for a community to pitch in and help with the duplicated work is not a solution. The solution is to pick the largest library and use its format.

crote 3y ago

> It's only because of closed source tools stuck in the stone age that the state of the art is to copy out of a PDF. Not really. KiCad is open-source and a very capable EDA suite, for example. The problem is that it's a really hard problem for which no one-size-fits-all solution exists. There's basically an infinite number of properties which are important when designing electronics, many of which will have to be nudged depending on your design. Capturing all that in a data format is virtually impossible, and any attempt to do so is likely to degrade into something unusual quite quickly once you get past the trivial stuff. In my experience reading it out of a PDF is usually not that big of a deal, once you get used to it. For things like schematics symbols and footprints there are data interchange formats available - and there's a pretty decent chance these days they'll be openly available for the part you are using. But they always contain mistakes, and I find it way faster to just roll my own from the PDF than to copy it ready-made from a 3rd party and fix the errors.

michaelt 3y ago
> The problem is that it's a really hard problem for which no one-size-fits-all solution exists. Not really, IME. Let's say I want a SMPS. Something basic, say 12-24v in 3.3v out at 1A. I can buy a module and solder it onto my PCB, or copy a reference design out of a PDF, or vendors like TI have tools like webbench to help me generate a custom design. The vendor wants to hand me a proven design and have me buy their chips. I want to be handed a proven design and know my project's going to work right first time. But no, the likes of Altium have got to have their vendor lock-in by making copy-and-paste absolutely as difficult as possible. There's no great skill or inventiveness in me drawing out the world's billionth SMPS design. I'm not "solving a hard problem" - it's drudgery. > and there's a pretty decent chance these days they'll be openly available for the part you are using. But they always contain mistakes, So you'd agree, then, that when a human copies from a PDF manually there's a substantial chance of them introducing errors? Are you and I not equally vulnerable to making such mistakes? Frankly I find it absurdly wasteful that the industry has transistors in the same package but with different pinouts and the 'solution' to keeping this stuff in order is... senior engineers checking junior engineers' work against PDFs manually.

stephen_g 3y ago

As an electronic design engineer, it just feels to me like these kind of things aren't really huge problems day-to-day... In terms of decoupling designs etc., the reason nobody has come up with a better solution is firstly that it doesn't actually take up enough time in the scheme of things to bother, and secondly that you often have to deviate. For variable regulators for example, the output capacitor (and inductor if it's not included in the device) are chosen based on output voltage, the switching frequency you choose, and sometimes other variables. You often want to deviate from the recommended circuit in the application notes for various reasons. I'd think of a circuit board production as more like putting together a magazine than working on a software codebase, where you'd have a bunch of people working on overlapping parts of the code. I mean even for a lot of boards we do (even quite complex ones) we'll just have one design engineer and one layout engineer, but for things where multiple people work on the schematic we just have people work on their own sheets and then somebody brings them together into the final design - kind of like where you might have an overall designer/editor that pulls a magazine together but individual people having put together individual articles. But it's pretty common that it would still be mostly laid out by a single engineer unless you're doing something extremely complex...

mawildoer 3y ago
We have some plans and atopile already supports some configuration regarding those deviations. There's a component selector which can choose resistors, caps, inductors etc... from a database of known components. Currently it's a free-for-all, but naturally we expect to be able to constrain this to a subset of components like "thing we already use at this company". That database means (once equations are also in) we'll be able to capture those requirements and change those output components depending on the scenario.