It would be great if part manufacturers would just make the footprint files and 3D files available for the parts, because I have no doubt that in 99% of cases the manufacturer has those files somewhere. I've tried to social engineer this out of some companies with very little success. I don't care what format they come in, I'll get it sorted out. I have collected an arsenal of file format conversion tools.
>Maybe it's this kind of thing we'll automate using LLMs/models
I have no doubt that at some point in the future you'll just give the AI the PDF and it will spit out a PCB footprint in any file format you want. We're not close to that though.
Maybe part of the inertia is that it pays too many people's meals, since you can buy this as a service ...
https://resources.sw.siemens.com/en-US/technology-overview-p...
I assume many vendors also offer parts libs/files in EDA formats, but are those proprietary or is there any de-facto standard like Gerber files?
It'd also be nice to browse datasheets' other contents in a consistent interface right in the EDA or in a web app instead of dealing with a zoo of PDFs in vendor-specific styles.
Maybe it's this kind of thing we'll automate using LLMs/models ... give it a description of the scripting API of the EDA, give it the PDF, make it map a footprint from one to the other. Or to a standard format. For back catalogs that could be useful ...