The Ultralibrarian mess - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2014, 05:46:25 pm
content: I needed some parts from TI and since i was too lazy to make the footprint myself i decided to download the files provided by TI.BIG MISTAKE. it took me 3 hours to get their shit running !First of all : the version of Ultralibrarian on their website is outdated. The download is 900 Megabytes !Then you install it, wait for it to complete and it wants to update. another 500 meg to download... and more waiting.Then it finally runs and all export options are disabled. What the fuck ?So i called the guys that make the tool... Oh yeah, well the licence is outdated. uninstall it and download this file...fine. Another 15 minutes of waiting later it seems to work.It turns out UL spits out a script file. so you ned to make a script project in altium , load that script, start it point it o the file loaded from the TI website ... only to find out the engine is only compatible with Altium 13 ... it doesn't work in 14.So i exported it to eagle, had to download eagle to run the script , save it and import it that way into altium.3 hours i am trying to get a simple footprint from TI website. TI SUCKS !

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2014, 06:07:35 pm
content: It's not related to PCB design but I have to agree. Their German ads here in the forum for some MOSFETs claim a R_DS_on of 19.2MOhms for example. Yes Mega, not milli! After I've sent them an email about that issue (who would buy such a MOSFET? :-) their response was that they can't help and that I should contact the technical service.

author: kizzap
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 04:31:27 am
content: Surely after the first hour you would have simply downloaded the datasheet, and started drawing out the IC? Seems like a lot of hassle. I do get that if it worked first time it would have been quicker though.

author: Dago
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 05:58:36 am
content: Use footprint expert:http://www.pcblibraries.com/FPX/The lite version is free. Making pretty much any footprint will take a maximum of a minute or so and it will be an IPC-7351 compliant footprint. It exports files suitable for import for a ton of different software packages.One of the best pieces of software I have ever ran in to.

author: ElektroQuark
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 06:23:58 am
content: Any direct link? It looks like they want to knowallabout me before the download. The registering form is huge. The only thing the do not ask for are human sacrifices...Quote from: Dago onTodayat 04:58:36 PM

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 07:24:27 am
content: Altium has an ipc footprint engine in it. Problem is ti doesnt give the the required dimes ions for the wizard. Instead of center to center of pads they give edge to edge and so on...And this part is a specific ti only, non jedec footprint...So i thought, ok download it and done... Big mistake.

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 03:41:26 pm
content: So I'm not dumb when I need to bust the calculator everytime I need to use some TI part and only half the dimensions are there and the rest need to be calculated/eye-balled from their incomplete drawings?I taugh it was me being dumb

author: marshallh
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 04:28:40 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on June 16, 2014, 05:46:25 pmI could've told you that.. UL is a piece of crap written in VB6 and MS Access that looks like it was written 15 years agoIt generates VBScript that you're supposed to run in Altium, except it doesn't work in 13 either, for a 8 pin package it generated dozens of errors and the footprint was incomplete.Don't bother and just make the footprint manually. My guess is the orcad/expedition exports must work, otherwise there's no way it'd be used by TI

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 07:31:24 pm
content: Quote from: senso on June 17, 2014, 03:41:26 pmMost footprint drawing show edge-to-edge dimensions. Drawings with centre-to-centre measurements are extremely rare. I guess the people who make the footprint drawings are mechanical engineers. Things can get much worse though. A while ago I made a footprint for this SD slot:http://www.molex.com/pdm_docs/sd/5035000991_sd.pdf

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2014, 08:00:08 pm
content: Quote from: senso on June 17, 2014, 03:41:26 pmi hate those drawings. If a part has the jedec dimensions ( the onese with the letters e,E, B ,H, and so on ) those are easy as almost any cad tool has a wizard. simply type in the numbers and the stuff rolls out.But for anything more complex it is a nightmare. what i do now is first look at 3dcontentcentral or the manufacturers website to see if there is a STEP model available. I then extract it from there. most big boys like Samtec, Tyco , AMP , Molex have step files for all the stuff they make.I am the first to generate my own footprints. problem in this case is i dont have the actual part in hand... before spitting out the board i like to put the real part on a 1:1 printout.. soo i thought : if i can get a CAD file ... but alas.

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 30, 2014, 12:25:06 pm
content: UL works quite well for me with AD14, however there is a bug in the script, which causes it to spit errors in certain files. The script expects numbers with preceding zeros (0.x) but the exporter sometimes generates object without these zeros (.x). A simple text search and replace fixes that.

author: boz
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 01, 2014, 09:03:20 pm
content: Just thought I'd add my +1 to the "ultra-librarian is a pile of shite" voteI have the version I use to convert Microchip footprints, though as one poster has suggested it is far easier to start from scratch, here is the screen I am greeted with once the splash screen has gone, the process goes downhill from here

author: SirNick
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 02, 2014, 01:34:08 am
content: Oh man. I downloaded that thing to grab the footprint for an IC once... It worked, I guess, but I don't have any of the software they list. I seem to remember it had some kind of integrated CAD viewer though. I just used that to show the dimensions I needed, and then made the footprint by hand.I would also like to acknowledge the fact that Molex datasheets are indeed a PITA. Some are very thorough -- like to the point of being difficult to read. Others seem to pick random places to use as reference points to other measurements, so you have to build scaffolding out of silk screen to calculate the distance between attributes that matter. And then there are the parts that don't really line up in either metric or imperial. Yeah, it's really 3.73 mm from this pin to that. Uh, why? Do you just hate grids?