PCB publishing doesn’t work. Well, technically, people can publish their designs (this isn’t a bug report) but there isn’t a design that has been published that I would use. Not because the designs are bad or anything. It’s because I can’t see what the design is or the specific components to use. No schematic or other documentation seem to be available.
It would be great if SFE had a way to publish documentation with the PCB. Maybe tie it into open circuits. However, just a simple schematic would help a lot. A BOM would be a good thing too. Mouser allows you to create a project (basically a parts list) and share it with others. You can do a 1 click order of the project. It would be cool to have a set of project links. Anyone that is interested should look under project manager off the mouser home page.
Anyway, I can see how, with a little effort, PCB publishing could be a really great feature of your site.
I think there’s a couple that have a reference website URL in them, but ya, I was thinking the same thing. Other than the tiny breakout boards I don’t have enough info about any of them to be interested in them.
I have ordered my first PCB and I want to make it public, but when I click on Save button nothing happens and in the lower left corner of the browser the status changes from Done to Error on page. Can someone fix that, or if it is my computer, let me know what I can do to fox it. Another thing is when I uploaded the files I had to click on the refresh button every step, but the file uploaded and passed succesfully. Any idea why that happened? I am using XP pro and Explorer 6.
I think the idea it was conceived around was more that people on blogs/websites for a project to post a link to buy “xyz” pcb.
People like DIYDrones who already have a website for all the information needed, and just a link to buy the PCB.
Or people who post projects on Instructables, all the info is there and they just post a link to buy the PCB.
I don’t think it’s meant to be something where you browse through the public PCB’s on BatchPCB and pick one to make. If it is, it’s probably a bit of an afterthought.
Personally I think it’s fine at the moment, expanding it into what you say would be more like turning it into fully blown project host.
That said, adding fields for BOM’s and instructions would be nice, but I don’t think it’s really supposed to be used like that.