Is there anywhere we can share reuse blocks?

[Pearo]

Just getting back into PCB design due to our old contractor retiring. Its been a while (Protel 99se) since I have done any real design work, but I still remember most of the shortcuts!! Anyway, I was please to see that there is now reusable blocks. I went looking for a Raspberry Pi CM5 block online and found nothing. I pretty much use the compute modules for all my proof of concept stuff these days so I am going to do a reusable block over the next few weeks. In the spirit of open source I though I should share it somewhere... But where?

[free_electron]

github.

[Doctorandus_P]

Protel is getting very old now. I don't know when it has been discontinued by altium, but it's quite a while ago.

If you're committed to "the spirit of Open Source", then why use Protel? In the last 5 to 10 years KiCad has become very popular. it's a completely FOSS project, and recently, reusable design blocks have also been added. Because both KiCad and the Raspi stuff are popular, there are already a bunch of projects which overlap with those two.

I did a short search with:

https://devbisme.github.io/RepoRecon/

And some of the projects I found are:

https://github.com/schlae/cm5-reveng
https://github.com/Trident-Sensing/RPi-CM5-KiCAD
https://github.com/VIBE2051/RPI-CM5-Carrier-Board
https://github.com/Wet-Lettuce-Robocup/robot_pcb

... And there are more. I have not looked into any of those repositories though. The quality of such repositories vary from "just fooling around" to "amazing project".

Hackaday has a whole lot of articles about KiCad:
https://hackaday.com/blog/?s=kicad

And there are also several other sites which are based around (sharing) KiCad content. For example:
https://www.circuitsnips.com/browse

How similar are the CM4 and CM5? There seem to be a lot more in around for the CM4.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=raspberry+compute+kicad&iar=images&t=h_
https://www.digikey.com/en/maker/projects/creating-a-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-cm4-carrier-board-in-kicad/7812da347e5e409aa28d59ea2aaea490

[free_electron]

Protel 99SE then Protel DXP , DXP2004 and then they changed name to Altium Designer. with the winter/summer editions which evolved into a near monthly cycle. We're at 26.4 now.

[Batang]

I go back far enough to remember using Protel for Dos and then Autotrax.

I recall being shown a demonstration of inhouse software that would become Protel at the Hobart University.

[free_electron]

I still have the floppies for Autotrax 1.61 somewhere. And the CDrom from "Protel for windows 3.1". AdvSch and ADVpcb. onwards.
I've done every version including vault and enterprise servers.
it's my bread and butter.

[PlainName]

If you're committed to "the spirit of Open Source", then why use Protel? In the last 5 to 10 years KiCad has become very popular. it's a completely FOSS project, and recently, reusable design blocks have also been added. Because both KiCad and the Raspi stuff are popular, there are already a bunch of projects which overlap with those two.

There are a lot of commercial and closed-source applications where users have shared scripts and tools and all kinds of stuff just because they want to share. Hell, there are many free programs for Windows - how does that tie into your "you  can't  be serious unless you go the whole hog and run stuff you don't want to".

Kicad is good and has come on a long way. But it is not Altium. Would you like Altium evangelists to pollute the kicad forum with irrelevant advertising just because it's the program they use? Maybe you should think about appropriateness, and how pushing too hard just puts people off whatever it is you're shoving in their face.

[thm_w]

I use grabcad for sharing 3D models and maybe 90% of the content on there is drawn in closed source software: https://grabcad.com/library

I think it is useful to mention the existing kicad designs though, as you can potentially import those into Altium.

[Doctorandus_P]

Maybe you should think about appropriateness, and how pushing too hard just puts people off whatever it is you're shoving in their face.

Yes, I did think about that.
I thought my post was appropriate because OP is coming from protel (20+ years old?), and it's not clear whether he posted in this altium section because he's committed to altium, or just because his old protel is a precursor to altium.

Also, most of my post is about the compute modules. I do not see why showing there is all sort of stuff around these compute modules for KiCad is inappropriate in this thread. And as thm_w already mentioned, the KiCad stuff can be imported into altium which makes it more relevant.

And of course OP is free to make his choice. It's not like I'm going to call him and nag about KiCad continuously. There are many different levels of "commitment to FOSS", and if OP just wants to share whatever he can share with altium that's just fine. There is also a huge difference between "free programs" and FOSS.

One word from OP dat he's not interested in KiCad and I'm silent in this thread. And I do believe it's justified to push KiCad a little bit. altium has huge budgets, also for advertising, and KiCad runs on voluntary donations and has no advertising budget. I've seen plenty of (sort of) nice projects youtube, and then I get some unsolicited advertisement for altium shoved in my face. And quite a lot of those are unfortunately "minimum effort videos" with just enough input to earn the advertisement money.

Would you like Altium evangelists to pollute the kicad forum with irrelevant advertising just because it's the program they use?

If mentioning of altium is in context, then it's just fine on the KiCad forum. I have even advised some people to use another program then KiCad (like altium) because KiCad has not evolved enough yet for their needs. Unsolicited advertisements on the KiCad forum for any commercial program get removed by one of the moderators. And in between there is a grey area, and each case gets reviewed by a human.

And I am aware that I'm posting in the altium section here. I do a bit of altium bashing, but there are also plenty of occasions where I don't post at all because it is the altium section.