chennes wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 4:56 pm
The FPA is planning to fund development work aimed at creating a solution to the "giant part library" problem. My current rough draft of the project requirements, based on previous discussion in this topic, is:
A shame I did see this post not earlier.
I never got around to write something like this myself since 3 years now but it would be very very useful.
I do use a local library with 6.2GB, about 8600 files. All files are manually selected/edited and the whole structure is 100% maintained.
The library covers different areas as the FreeCAD lib does, e.g. "Mechnical", "Electronics", etc. Each has the following substructure
"Components", "Devices", "RawMaterials" where Components are parts I can purchase which are used only as component of an own product like screws, motors, microcontrollers etc. Devices are complete products of their own, e.g. a drilling machine, measurement device etc. Raw materials are usually variables parts like HEB beams, rods, sheet metal, insulating foam etc.
That workes fine an serves FreeCAD and KiCAD. It contains STL and FreeCAD files. Wherever available I used manufacturer CAD files, usually converted to FCSTD and edited, e.g. for color or give it a suitable tree structure.
The normal use is to browse the structure in a file manager and manually copy the files into a "/lib" subfolder in my project. This works but can be a bit tedious, so I am very glad for your effort
.
Obviously there are many ways to use a parts library. As I made a lot of iterations and a lot of trial and error before getting to the current working state I thought some of my lessons learned might be rather generic and may be useful. I apologize for not being able to make it shorter...