The FlashPCB Library

You do not have to use the FlashPCB library to get your board manufactured and assembled with us. However, in order to get the most out of FlashPCB we recommend you design your boards using our component library. If you use the FlashPCB library we can help you automatically build a bill of materials and run additional design rule checks that will allow us to assemble your board faster.

We are constantly improving the component library and adding new components. If there are particular components you would like added to the library you can request that particular components be added to our library.

FlashPCB provides libraries for Autodesk Eagle, Fusion 360 and KiCad at this time. In the future we plan to support more CAD programs.

FlashPCB Library

Download the library

Download our libraries for the following CADs from our GitHub pages:

Adding the library to your CAD

Our blogposts explain how to stay up to date with our library and integrate the library with your CAD so that you can use the library in your board designs.

Using FlashPCB Library components in your PCB design

To understand how to use components from our library on your board it is important to understand a little about the rationale behind creating the library. We designed the library to ensure compatibility between the footprints in the library and specific parts in our inventory, and to ensure that certain design rule checks are met, such as proper courtyarding between parts. The use of the library also allows us to automatically generate a bill of materials from your design. We use the relationships our system has encoded between footprints, symbols, and parts in our inventory along with the information you've included in the Value text of each component to find matching components. We will cover more about component matching throughout the following sections.

We can only populate components that use the FlashPCB library. This is to ensure the manufacturability of your board and to allow us to run design rule checks against your design.

Finding the right part

If you have a particular component in mind to use in your design, you can search for it in our component search tool and find the entries in our library that fit that particular part. In the search result for each part you will see the library, device set, and package to use so that we can manufacture your board with the component you selected.

Using the Value text

Our AI inspects your board design and uses the device set, package, and Value text of each component in your design to identify the specific part from our inventory that best satisfies the intentions of your design. For these reasons you should use the Value text for each component to specify the various parameters of the part you want to use. For instance, you can specify 22k ohms 1% in the Value text if your design calls for a resistor with 22 kilo-ohms and with 1% tolerance. You can even simply specify 22k 1% and because the footprint you used is for a resistor (at least it is in this hypothetical scenario) our AI will assume that you mean 22 kilo-ohms.

You can also specify a particular manufacturer's part number from our inventory in your Value text and our BOM generator will pick that part if it exists in our inventory. If it is not in our inventory we will attempt to find a part with the same properties in our inventory.

Requesting additions to the library

We are continuously expanding our inventory and adding components to our library to expand our manufacturing capabilities but it is possible you will find that parts you would like to use are not in our inventory or covered by our library. In these cases you can request that specific components be added to our library via our site's contact form. Please include as much information as possible (i.e. the manufacturer, part number, and package name) in your message.

Next steps

Continue to the next section to learn how to incorporate the FlashPCB Library into your board design.