Adding custom parts from e.g. UltraLibrarian

[Alphaprot]

Hello community,

I was really pleased to see that an EE CAD-tool was added to Fusion 360 a year ago. There is however something missing in my opinion - and that is support for non-library.io-parts. Remember the days where you went to the part's manufacturers page to download a EE CAD-file of the component? Or went to UltraLibrarian's vast assortment of parts?

I get that Autodesk's short-term reply will be "Well, it's not that hard to make your own part" - I already did that on EAGLE a few times, but still the question remains "Why should I invest time to create a footprint and symbol of an already existent part made by someone who's likely more professional than me?".

So, with all honour and respect to Fusion 360's cloud functionality - is there a way to simply import a local component from e.g. UltraLibrarian into a design?

Any input is kindly appreciated. A forum search showed only questions of importing full custom libraries, but no single parts.

Kind regards

Yannik

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hi @Alphaprot ,

I hope you're having a great day. It's possible to import components from Ultralibrarian and other tools. Most of those tools will export an EAGLE script file which you can then run inside the Electronics library editor of Fusion 360, that will import the component into your library.

Now with that said, you asked a good question, "Why should I invest time to create a footprint and symbol of an already existent part made by someone who's likely more professional than me?" it deserves an answer. First off, most of the parts you'll find online, are made by programs not people. It's the only really feasible for a library to amass 100,000s of parts, this is especially true when dealing with Ultralibrarian. Second, even if a part was made by a human, that human isn't responsible for your PCBs, you are. If you use a component and it turns out to have a mistake, you will have to eat the loss so it always in your best interest to either verify the parts you download to make sure they are correct or to make them yourself. As you learn to make parts you'll find that it's usually faster to make a part yourself then to verify someone else's work.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[Alphaprot]

Hi Jorge,

you got a fair point with your explanation why it should be always be top priority to any EE designer to verify that the parts inside your schematic are really those you want to see soldered onto your PCB later.

Frankly speaking, I did not know that the creation of library parts is mostly automated, but for sure, it makes sense.

Speaking about automation, seems like I did not look into the Automation-tab of the library editor (where scripts can be started from) - thanks for the heads-up.

So huge thank you for your comprehensive answer to my post's inherent question.

Kind regards

Yannik Zausig

[logmeintoautodesk]

I've imported a bunch of TI components from UltraLibrarian the last couple of days by exploring eagle scripts and step files, and for 100% of components the scripts failed to create the symbols.

Footprints and step import worked fine though, which was for me the biggest deal for some not quite standard packages.

There seems to be some compatibility issue with UltraLibrarian exported eagle scripts and the Fusion 360 eagle script parser.

@jorge_garcia, could you raise a ticket if none exist already?

Many thanks

[Jeff_UofM]

The question remains. How can I import a part from a symbol and footprint and 3D that I download from Digikey or any supplier into Fusion360. Sometimes they are from snapeda, or ultralibrarian. I thought it was hard enough getting them into Eagle, but I finally got that to work. I made some good boards. Now I'm working electronic designs in fusion360, and I don't have a clue how to import the parts I want. Right now, I've just about given up on snap eda. So I tried ultralibrarian. But to no avail. It is probably easy once you learn how and where to import them. But I've been stuck for a long time. I would be happier if I found those parts in the fusion libraries, but I don't see them. I don't think I'm the only one who is having a stroke over it. Right now I want a 1989748 terminal in symbol, footprint and 3D. I can find the parts, and the symbol and footprint from one service and the 3D from another. But I don't have a clue how to get them into my design. Anybody?