Creating the Perfect Part

Congratulations! You used the tools and techniques described in part one of this blog series on component libraries, Finding the Perfect Part, to research and find the perfect part to meet your design requirements. Now you need that part available in your component library as quickly as possible. To recap from part one, every hardware engineer at some point will encounter one or both of the following situations:

1. Struggling to find the perfect part to meet design requirements
2. Not being able to create the perfect part in an efficient and timely manner

You’ve passed the first hurdle, now what are your options to create the perfect part in an efficient and timely manner?

When creating the perfect part, hardware engineers and librarians need tools and techniques that:

• Reduce the amount of time spent building the symbol and footprint
• Provide a correct-by-construction methodology
• Allow for association of electrical and/or mechanical models
• Provide ECAD data import options directly from the part search/research portal
• Allow for parametric entry of part information
• Are compliant with the latest IPC, JEDEC and ANSII standards
• Contain high quality information, eliminating frustration with issues such as incorrect part numbers, pin number errors or part attribute errors to name just a few
• Include features to help keep track of parts and also to create custom project folders
• Use a secure and release-independent format for conveying the component data
• Support both vendor created and custom created footprints that can be adjusted to your manufacturing process

In the Mentor Xpedition flow, the PartQuest component portal delivers all of the above listed features. PartQuest contains symbols and footprints for over 850,000 Digi-Key® parts, and all of the schematic symbols and PCB footprints are ready to import into Xpedition using the Enterprise Data eXchange or EDX data format.

Two videos, How to Use PartQuest with Xpedition and PartQuest – Build Parts with Footprints demonstrate how PartQuest is used to deliver components for your project. The PartQuest portal includes access to a community that not only provides a discussion forum, but also includes detailed documentation and how-to videos.

Thanks for following along during this two part series on component libraries. Hopefully you have gained insights into how you and your team can use PartQuest to quickly and efficiently find and create the perfect part!