PCBLivingLibrary (oliBrowne) errors

15 recurring problems engineers report in PCBLivingLibrary (oliBrowne), ranked by impact.

#787 by errors trackedECAD

Recurring PCBLivingLibrary (oliBrowne) errors, by impact

  1. 1A component-library pipeline's three publishers (Altium 365, Altium DbLib, KiCad) all trusted a plan file's status field, so a plan that said ready could release parts nothing had checked. In a dry run, CH340C and TPS62133RGTR would have shipped to Altium 365 while the release check was still holding them.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report74
  2. 2A full review of oliBrowne's KiCad/Altium part library pipeline found that a BOM line with 0805 or 1206 in the footprint column became a plain two-pad chip even when the description said array, common-mode choke, balun or RGB, and was marked ready. Polarized caps were only recognised by part-number prefix, so a tantalum could get a symmetric land. A crash in the footprint checker or the KiCad vs Altium comparison counted as a warning, so the part passed. And a reject written while release-check was writing the plan got overwritten, so the rejected part was exported.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report74
  3. 3An AI datasheet reader was building wrong footprints and marking them ready, so the fix is to hold the part for a person. Cases it used to build: a 2 x 2 mm WSON read as 2 x 50.8 mm, inch values labelled mm, values the reader itself listed as unread built as guessed, and a pin list that put every pin on one net, which switched off the pad overlap check. A 6-pin QFN got split 1+2+1+2.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report74
  4. 4The tool reads the BOM description to catch multi-pad or polarized parts sitting on a plain chip footprint. Its word lists only knew a few spellings. On main, 46 of 65 realistic BOM lines came out ready as a plain two-pad chip. Examples were 'RES NET 4 ISOLATED 10K 0603', '8P4R', 'Trimmer potentiometer', 'CMC 90 ohm', 'LED RGBW 1210', 'POSCAP', 'Ta cap', and tantalum written in German, French, Spanish, Polish or Chinese. That is a wrong footprint passing as ready.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report74
  5. 5A bug hunt on a living KiCad/Altium component library logged 40+ bugs, each with a regression test that failed first; HIGH items include a metric "Case Code (mm)" BOM field read as imperial ("built wrong"), an inch pad table read as mm, a KiCad export that shipped draft, typo, duplicate and deleted statuses, KiCad-to-PcbLib conversion dropping arcs, circles and bottom pads, and an edited recipe or STEP file of a released part shipping with no change control.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  6. 6A part the librarian marked passive only from its BOM letter, like R5 or C3, got passive pins in Altium but kept its source's input and output pins in KiCad. Same part, two tools, two different electrical definitions. The fix records the passive decision in the plan so both outputs use it. The same PR found that on Debian and Ubuntu the KiCad 10 plugin button never appeared because pip was missing for the virtual environment.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  7. 7A part-library pipeline hunting package drawings let 7 wrong documents through out of 8 on the Oct 24 run (checks too loose: part-number prefix, family plus pin count, full MPN on a document with no drawing); the Oct 23 run also picked up end-of-life change notices as if they were drawings.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  8. 8A through-hole header pulled from EasyEDA had its 3D body sunk 3 mm into the board and was reported 5.5 mm tall when it is 8.5 mm; separately, typing a bare LCSC number in Altium's Add part was refused as a BOM mismatch, so the part was held with no symbol or footprint.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  9. 9An automated datasheet-to-footprint pipeline scored only 81 of 110 parts right after a full run, with 29 still wrong, including a pin-naming disagreement where the datasheet says only 'ground'/'supply voltage' and the pipeline names GND/VCC while KiCad names VN/VP.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  10. 10In this datasheet-to-KiCad footprint pipeline, tab packages are the weakest family. SOT-89 reads with the lead span read 10x or 2x too long, or the terminal length cut by 10 or 2, still built footprints with moved pads. The sweep went from 6 such builds to 0 after a new check that holds any read where the reach past the body is over 4x the longest foot. The benchmark was also wrong. A part with no symbol was counted as "built wrong" when the release check would never release it at all.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  11. 11Resistors, capacitors and inductors share one generic symbol whose Comment is the Value field, and that value only came from a BOM Value or Comment column. Distributor exports carry designator, quantity, maker, MPN and description, with no Value. So every passive came through with an empty value, blank on the Altium schematic, the part number as KiCad's Value, a parity mismatch, and the release check still called them ready. The repro is a 3-line BOM that gives "3 ready", all with Value ''. The fix reads the one value the description names and refuses to guess when there are two.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  12. 12Running all 15,468 KiCad footprint names through the tool's part resolver against KiCad's own footprints gave 149 mismatches: resistor arrays and RGB LEDs became two-pad chips, a 12 mm Bourns power inductor was read as a 1210 chip, TO-220 horizontal became vertical via a regex word boundary at an underscore. The resolver runs before the datasheet reader on every BOM line, so each mismatch is a possible built-wrong part.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  13. 13Same repo, same night, about the benchmark scorer. A part built from the model's own reading of the land pattern counted as right because it matched itself. Now a part counts right only if a land pattern checked by hand against the datasheet page matches what was built. Without one it is unverified. Parts the release check held for a real defect had also been counted as right. The headline accuracy number was grading the model against its own answer.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  14. 14The BOM called a KTY83 sensor DO-34, but neither NXP's datasheet nor its package document gives a hole size or lead bend, so the footprint was held; vertical-mount names also got the flat footprint, a gap that also covered DO-41.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66
  15. 15The release check always held one regulator with "symbol pins without a pad: 2" because a cut N.C. lead stayed on the symbol; the package-drawing search also produced false holds, reading 74HC14 and AT24C08 as package codes and SOT23's 23 as a pin count.ECAD · Agent failure · 1 report66

How it fails

  1. Agent failure15

Sourced from public community reports. Costs and delays on individual entries are modeled estimates, not measurements.