In our tool, just give it a part number and it will find and download the footprint and create an ato file for the component.
We currently support components on JLC, but eventually plan to build out a pretty substantial library. We will also capture a good fraction of information that you would currently need to go to the datasheet for.
I wanted to give your tool a good look before I responded, hence why I am responding so late.
Anyway, my 2c worth:
1.
> In our tool, just give it a part number and it will find and download the footprint and create an ato file for the component.
I don't think this is scalable (although, for my use, probably sufficient). There are just too many parts that are in existence, and the rate of new part creation is probably higher per day than your staff and/or community can handle.
It's fixable if you have plugins for each EDA tool's format (KiCad, Eagle, etc).
2. I'm very surprised at the language used - it's very unlike what is normally used (s-expressions) in EDA. Lisp-like languages tend to be highly used in CAD applications, so it would clear a lot up if you were to explain what the advantages ato are over a minimal Lisp-like language.
3. The dependency list (in terms of knowledge required) is a dealbreaker for me[1]. I need to know how to manage Python environments, the ato language and YAML?
Since all of the constructs in all of those languages are a subset of (or can be represented by) s-expressions, perhaps it would have been best if you switched to s-expressions only. Then a) there's only one language to learn, b) that language is already syntax-highlighted and c) it's flexible enough for any future features you want to add in (rules definition, rules-checkers, etc).
From what I can see here and now, the ato language would have to see significant changes if it needs to be used for some serious stuff.
Sorry for the negativity, but I wish you all the luck nevertheless.
[1] I looked for a download link, couldn't find one, read a few of the installation instructions, then gave up.
For sure, the way I see the component library is ability to capture progress. In the current paradigm how many times have schematics, symbols and footprints been drawn up for common ICs/circuits? I would expect 100s or in some cases many thousands of times. Our hope is by providing an open source and shareable format we can reduce this. If people really hate code and want to write a tool to convert to altium/kicad/cadence format, go for it! At the same time, I think the way we share component data is pretty dated, PDF datasheets do not adequately capture component information in a way that can be apples to apples compared in any automated fashion, best we have is something like a digikey search. In the future I would like to be able to have much more sophisticated requirements that automated search tools can use to help me find the best components for my use.
Not personally a fan of the readability of lisp, but that is just a personal preference. Our assumption is that python is going to be the most familiar language to our users and following a python like syntax will make picking it up easy. Our language is definately still quite immature and we are still figuring out exactly what it should look like.
There is definitely a little bit of a learning curve at the moment, we do have some getting started videos that walk you through the whole process. If there is anything missing or confusing, please point it out! We do want to make it as approachable as possible. It will only get better from here, I promise!
On the downloading, currently we have the package on pypi, which does make it pretty easy to install from a command line, but I can appreciate that will be new to alot of people. In the future we might do an executable download version.
We currently support components on JLC, but eventually plan to build out a pretty substantial library. We will also capture a good fraction of information that you would currently need to go to the datasheet for.