For grins, I picked a DTC113ZKA tranistor.
And, the DataSheet is here:
See if you can read this…
There is just no good reason to include this in a “basic” installation where every release is incrementally approaching 1GB of data.
No offence, but what’s wrong with that? Kicad offers the option of removing libraries you don’t need from the project as well as adding custom libraries you want to use. Hard-drive space is cheaper then ever and storage capacity increases exponentially every few years: 4TB disks are commonplace these days, with prices on even larger capacity disks running downhill pretty much daily.
In other words: I don’t see your point 
DATA use-age to download. Where I am at, I use my phone Data Plan for Internet to my computer. Nearly 1Gig is starting to become a major impact on my phone Data Plan.
I don’t want to have to pay to download something I don’t want in the first place.
On Edit: That 99.9% of users will never use either.
With respect to the nightlies, I agree that the libraries should be separate downloads. Smaller download of the nightly would increase the chance that more users will be testing updates more often and help in detection of bugs. Also it is an unnecessary load on servers on the internet (read energy consumption).
For the stable version it is not a big deal as it is updated so seldom and make it easier for new users to get started. (On the other hand if the download folders also had the library file next to the program install file, that would not be too big of a difficulty for new users). As I routinely only have help files and footprint wizards checked during installation and manage libraries separately at a custom user folder, I am not even sure the library in the install files are up to date.
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Fair point. I did consider download size, but the current proliferation of broadband internet, including on mobile devices, with high speeds and (fairly) low cost per GB are, for 99% of users, not really an issue.
Symbols (and footprints) are not the problem for data size. 3d models are.
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It is, or is it not, the schematic symbol that drives the corresponding need for the the footprint, and the 3D model?
I wasn’t ready to put some really nice features on the data chopping block.
Keep in mind that new users have to spend the time to scroll past things they will NEVER use; schematics, footprints, and 3d models in every install.
Why the agressive title? If you hate it that much dont use it and don’t bother us.
Some day the libs will be separate package from the binaries like it is on linux, meanwhile we have some growing pains.
The part you linked comes in a standard sot-323 package. The footprint and therefore the 3d model for this package is shared by many different symbols.
3D models are linked to footprints not symbols.
Maybe request a installer without 3d models. A user with limited data can download the models as they need them.
Also remember the number of symbol libs added by default is already quite small. 20 of the nearly 100 libs. In v5 we hopefully get the symbol table stuff which will make it easier to manage which libs are shown to the user.
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The trend is away from part number specific symbols to generic parts as found in device.lib
In your example from transistors.lib, someone has gone too far with unique symbols with base resistor values shown
Even the the library is only 140KB uncompressed, negligible in the 700MB installer.
Unfortunately dropping these specific parts would draw complaints from beginners too lazy to open a data sheet and find out the correct BCE pin mapping
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Ekhm, ekhm… These were my added symbols, and I (still) did’t think I’m going too far when I designed it.
I never suggested deleting these permanently.
However, when it comes to Data Bandwidth, how many users are likely going to use the design every time it is is downloaded?
And, if you have not CHANGED the design, why is everyone re-downloading it EVERY TIME?
The title is cased correctly as far as my English teachings goes. There might be a claim that the word “is” should not be capitalized; but, “everyone is”, is a significant point of the title.
I am unaware of any means to “highlight” a word in the title block in this forum. Therefore, I used all caps for the single word that best described the issue I wanted to discuss.
Please show me academic reason to not do it the way I way I did, such that I can do it better next time.
Two generic symbols, one with base series only and one with a base to emitter also, no resistor values in the symbol, would have been a compromise
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“Rarely used” would have been a better term. I have come across these parts in Japanese HiFi
[Snarky On]
Just how many KiCad users design new Japanese HiFi?
[/Snarky Off]
I have reverse engineered a damaged board to replace it after leaking battery etc before now.
It’s amazing what people will do sometimes to repair old equipment
Clearly, You Are Using the WRONG Tool For The Job. That’s like using a pair of scissors to MOW a lawn! I’ve got FIBER broadband now, web pages load in an INSTANT and I don’t even notice download times.
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Nope. The library is marching towards atomic parts. (Within reason of course.)
I don’t think so. (Most of the “symbols” in there are actually aliases. Aliases add even less to the data size.)
Thanks for the nice symbols.
Again the symbol lib has a negligible data size. The problem are the 3d models.
Not on linux. Most linux versions use delta compression for their packet managers. (Why windows still does not come with a package manager is beyond me.)
I found the following uncompressed data sizes:
- symbol libs (tag 4.0.7): 9.6 MB (largest libs: stm32 with 3MB and conn.lib with 1MB)
- all footprint libs (tag 4.0.7) including deprecated: 82.8MB (This includes git specific files.)
- 3d models (taq 4.0.7) main repo: 2.8GB (largest libs: pin headers 1.1GB and phoenix 596MB)
- 3d models (tag 4.0.7) new repo: 2.3GB (Fewer models. Not all models have been rebuild with step support.)
In conclusion: If you want to reduce the data size you need to remove the 3d models. So maybe it would be a good idea to have an installer without 3d models. (As mentioned above. But it got ignored.)
3d models can be easily downloaded by the user using the 3d shapes downloader found in pcb_new. With this tool the user can select what lib(s) they want to download. (Not everyone needs the display 3d files for example.)
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Only a bit off-site: 3d packages download still contain .WRL files which are obsolete now (I haven’t checked recently, but it worked like that a couple months ago).
I have deleted all WRL’s and populated 3dpackages folder with STP’s only…it is still 955MB. This points to the direction of separated lib downloads.