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Top quality components for a top quality design

A schematic for an electronic circuit contains (reusable) components, often called 'symbols'. Likewise, the layout of the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) also contains (reusable) components, often called 'footprints'. All major electronics design CAD applications contain libraries with such components. These are complemented with additional libraries offered by websites such as SnapEda or SamacSys and often also by vendors of electronic components.

So at first sight it looks like there are plenty sources for the schematic symbols and pcb-layout footprints, and as such there is no reason to design your own, a task which can be time-consuming. Using those components certainly can get your design jumpstarted and save you a lot of time initially, however, on closer inspection, there are lot of problems with the common libraries of components :

• if you use components from different libraries, they will likely have an inconsistent design (line-sizes, pin-naming, colors, ...), and so your schematic and pcb-layout will be inconsistent as well
• the symbols are not suitable for an easy to read schematic
• the footprints are missing a 3D model
• the pin-types are generic because component can be used in several ways
• the footprint layout uses settings for different manufacturers
• the symbol has dirty data in its metadata-fields and is missing the fields you need. Field names are cryptic abbreviations and can cause confusion and errors during manufacturing
• the footprint has dirty data in its fields and is missing the fields you need
• inconsistent pin 1 marking, or pin 1 marking collides with neighbor component
• silkscreen under the SMD component, which leads to manufacturing problems
• courtyard not on grid, leading to inefficient placing of components