Conversation highlights
What aspects of the distributed version control system, Git, makes it ideal for your collaborative hardware development platform?
Companies used legacy tools built on SVN or other proprietary database systems. However, as time went on, these organizations shifted to GitHub for their hardware designs. The change is due to the rise of Git for hardware. It has various capabilities and optimizations, making it perfect for hardware processes.
AllSpice is for engineers, but what specific disciplines? And how would they use your tool to develop their electronics more efficiently?
AllSpice is mainly built for:
- Electrical engineers
- Hardware engineers
- PCB designers
There are three major ways that these engineers will use AllSpice when automating their workflows. The first one is Git-based revision control, then collaboration for running design reviews/feedback sessions, and lastly automation. This can range from building processes and workflows to putting manual tasks into API (application programming interface) hooks or webhooks.
I understand that you have some integrations with ECAD companies. Could you expand on that a little bit?
AllSpice has KiCad and OrCad support and integrates with PLM tools. An example of those integrations is saving a file, performing a commit (because it is a part of the Git process), and pushing it to sync it with the database. Essentially, those native file formats are taken, which allows them to build front-end rendering. AllSpice helps users to visualize their work down to the object level. With that, you can get transistor and resistor information, plus trace, width, space, and more. So, much like the software industry, ECAD integration is primarily at the file level.
Tell us about your resource for Git for hardware
AllSpice has recently released an eBook, called Git for Hardware Guide, covering how EE’s, PCB designers, and hardware engineers use Git revision control for their electronics design process. It includes best practices and principles in adopting this workflow.
