The Crew Displays do not use Knockout.js. As far as I am aware this is possibly used in some other asset management software developed in-house for manufacturing teams but definitely not onboard Dragon.
Having played around with 3d printers for the last couple of years I have to say that they are an indispensable tool for makers/hackers/inventors/artist types. However for mass market as many here have said we are just not there yet.
To get there we really need to have a few innovative large manufacturers start publishing replacement part CAD models for their products. Making that leap is obviously a big deal for a lot of manufacturers who make outstanding margin on their replacement parts, but that is the kind of thing we need in order for a printer to be useful to the truly mass market.
Additionally, and I think we're seeing this already, we need a lot more 3d printable products to come to market. For example, I just recently finished printing a Clug bike rack for a friend (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/834664305/clug-cycle-st...). This is a prime example of bringing 3d printing to the general public - they provide a high quality version you can buy, or a cheap 3d printable version which you can pay a lot less for just the 3d files. We worked out that with the model cost and the material cost you could print somewhere in the region of 30 replacements before it was more economical to buy the mass produced high quality version. Thus far the rack hasn't broke yet either!
Hey all, looking for some feedback on our new site. A lot more detail about what we're trying to do can be found on our blog at http://blog.datasheet.net
What would it take to make a footprint database you can trust? I would imagine that community ranking/flagging of content could surely clean up inconsistent or invalid designs making the database more reliable.
Would approved manufacturer accounts that contained all the parts from a manufacturer make them more trustworthy?
Well lets hope that the CircuitHub team can get the traction they need to get the attention of the big manufacturers then.
There's certainly a chicken and the egg problem happening with this kind of innovation right now. I know for a fact that there are many people at the large manufacturers that know that symbol and footprint library management is a major headache. They all want a good solution to the problem, but nobody is willing to take the plunge on an as yet unproven system.
Hi Ben, I hope your well. Ideally we would like manufacturers to setup their own accounts and approve their own lib's, that would be a big win for users. Basically i think this problem has slipped between the cracks, the semi co's, engineers, EMS houses, EDA vendors etc all palm it off to each other!
Yeah I think that's definitely been the problem thus far.
There's a wind of change in the air though, I would definitely encourage you to try contacting the large manufacturers directly and see if you can get some buy-in. We've had some very encouraging discussions with some of them recently.
Let me know how it goes, if you don't get any joy perhaps we can hook you up.
Not so much sadly. Its rather limited in terms of design area, and the technology probably wouldn't scale to larger schematics anyway since its SVG based and currently SVG performance scales rather badly in most browsers.
Likewise there is no PCB editor, nor any import/export formats that would enable you to use your designs in a more practical fashion.
Having said all that however, its a great tool for creating diagrams for App Notes and technical articles / blogs. Works really nicely for the simple designs and examples that are so common when writing about electronics design. They've actually been fairly careful to market it on their site as a schematic drawing tool, not a schematic editor and this is a distinction that needs to be made since the two are not the same use-case at all.
Still, good to see more companies innovating in this space!
