At Upverter we’ve been working on a new product we call EE Concierge. We make and verify symbols, footprints, and 3D models for electrical components on-demand. We started doing this inside Upverter about 2 years ago. But with EE Concierge it’s now possible to use the concierge with Altium, Eagle and soon Cadence. If you’re a hardware engineer and you don’t use Upverter to design your PCBs you should check it out - we'd love your thoughts!
We hadn't planned on supporting either KiCad or Eagle though. We didn't think there was much of a market. Im curious what you all think - do you think people would be willing to pay for parts creation as a service for either kicad or eagle? Also don't you think there would be a flame-war of the FOSS Kicad crowd vs. proprietary pay-to0use parts data?
Sorry for the rough edges - we care very deeply about our UI and spend a lot of our time trying to make this stuff better.
If you ever want to send me an email about UI weirdness in Upverter Im happy to share your feedback with the team here and see what we can do to fix it: [email protected].
Most of what you're asking for exists in Upverter.
* Our default account is free & open-source.
* We've made UX a huge priority
* We've got the largest and most complete component library in the world
* We have an open source project for converting all of the ugly old propriety formats into an open, documented json format
* We monetize through privacy similar to github
And we've built a whole bunch of magic into Upverter that none of the other tools can even touch:
* 5 min setup: Nothing to install, maintain, no versions, no patches, no virtual machines, no need for Windows NT or some outdated OS to run the software etc. It's all online, pretty easy.
* Fully collaborative, and version controlled: You can see who made which change, when, roll changes back and fourth, including in editor issue tracking - all the same perks as designing software.
* Intuitive: Modern UI and UX, no infinite menus or buried features - our biggest user feedback is that Upverter is simply way, way easier to use than anything else.
* 10x Faster: parts are easier to create, you can do schematics and layouts at the same time, you can use open source parts, and build on open source reference designs, reuse modules... no syncing netlists, and no wasted effort.
* 10x cheaper: ($40 per user per month.) No huge upfront payment, and no hidden "maintenance" charges. Altium just jacked their prices up to $10K for a single user licence, Mentor and Orcad are just as bad and were seeing a lot of inbound because of it.
* Agile and responsive. Our support team is our dev team. If they can push some code to make your life easier overnight, it will happen. If you run into a problem, they will fix it in real time.
* Designed for growth. Sharing, collaboration, version control, flex users - you name it, its baked it. You wont run into a wall in 3 months, and you wont need to switch packages when you raise more money.
* Table stakes. It does everything that any of the other packages do. You dont have to give up any performance, complexity, or sophistication - so most of this is magic, extra, and unique to Upverter.
+ More of our Magic Features: IPC generators / BGA generators, Generics, Real-time design rule checking, Trace ghosting & Net highlighting when routing, Fast toggle between schematic & layout / Multi monitor support, Auto sync & save, Unlimited persistent undo, redo, In-design issue tracking, Fast module creation for design reuse, Auto schematic routing, Flex users, sharing, embedding, Real-time design collaboration, Cross probing
But we've got a newer version of this converter project that we are cleaning up right now. Its also able to do Altium, Cadence, and their libraries. Coming soon!
Its a babystep compared to whats needed, but we're trying to rethink EDA at upverter.com. Its a full editor thats also collaborative with lots of community features. It might be what you're looking for.
Thats a really cool idea. Similarily, we have been toying with the idea of auto-complete. Ie: You add a couple parts that we've seen connected before, you start to connect them in the same way, we recommend a way to hook them all up.
Also were working on the really simple things like just suggesting parts or implementations based other users designs.
Mostly handbaked into the app. As for payments, were processing in Canada using BeanStream. We open sourced our implementation here: https://github.com/upverter/beanstream
Agree with you on the pricing, its a hard one. Lets chat sometime! Were totally on the same wavelength.
We are actually working on a transcriber (https://github.com/upverter/schematic-file-converter), dropbox integration. And behind the scenes were doing "print" button style manufacturing for our more enterprise users (ie. click print and we get a one-off manufactured and mailed to you)
Every upverter schematic has an embed code and a ton of our traffic is driven from people importing their schematics and sharing them on their blogs.
Our HDL support is non-existant right now. We do have an open file format which can be created from or parsed to HDL. Do you work in HDL right now? I'd love to chat about this with you sometime - we come from the world of very large system design and there is almost no HDL usage at the system design level.
We do have a common library, all community entered and more than half edited by someone different than the creator. The library is free and public. We have a number of users of the library who havent yet adopted the rest of the upverter tool chain.
We based the pricing on our pilot users, and what they were willing to spend to be able to collaborate. We would love to chat if there is a different price you are willing to pay!
And for what its worth, we are working hard on PCB layout right now, and with any luck will be able to launch it in the next few months.