Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/626587
68 The PCB Design Magazine • January 2016 ditional programmers, a larger marketing budget, and they promised to keep and improve the CAD tool interfaces in LP Wizard. We looked at the Valor deal as a big win for us, and for our customers. Our customers were very happy at the news. Warner: how did the Valor acqui- sition turn out? Hausherr: Valor lived up to all of their promises and commit- ments. More programming help was added, marketing was expanded globally and the LP Wizard's future was bright, but this only last- ed for a little over a year. Mentor Graphics ac- quired Valor, and eventually chose to discon- tinue support for any CAD tool except theirs. This was the single biggest blow to LP Wizard as the product revenue was reduced drastically. About one year later, the remainder of the PCB Matrix team was laid off. So the original team went back to IPC and met with Dieter Bergman to apologize for all the commotion and upset- ting the global library industry. We discussed the creation of a brand-new tool that, unlike the LP Wizard, would be based on component dimensions going through user preferences to fully automate the creation of custom library parts, come with much more content, and even support non-standard parts. Warner: how did you restart pcB libraries? Hausherr: Nick, Jeff and I worked tirelessly for over a year to design a new website and cre- ate a new tool called PCB Footprint Expert from scratch. We eventually had to change the product name to PCB Library Expert once we offered the first 3D STEP automation tool in the industry, and we're planning on sup- porting schematic symbols in the near future. As common with startups and new products, while the new product gained a footing, we all worked for no pay or benefits for two years un- til we finally had enough sales to generate a small payroll. Warner: so what's next for pcB libraries inc.? Hausherr: We're currently re- writing Library Expert from scratch again for 2016. We plan to add new features that we did not consider or could not implement originally. Technol- ogy keeps changing. We want to take advantage of the latest Windows 10 OS and advance- ments in software programming tools for the new features, and help take the Library Expert into the future. The new Parts on De- mand website [1] has just started to take off and we now have one million part numbers that are free to all our Library Expert users. Some day we plan to have many millions of parts to offer our customers. I can see the day when maintaining large CAD libraries will be a thing of the past. The library parts for every design will be stored with the PCB design file and new library parts will be auto-generated with new rules that are specific to every new PCB layout. The days of manually creating and maintaining PCB library parts will come to an end in the near future. Warner: the future is looking good for the elec- tronics industry. shaving days off every pcB lay- out would be another major industry innovation. thank you, tom, for this informative interview and history lesson. Hausherr: Thank you for the interview. It was fun going back in time. References 1. www.PCBLibraries.com/POD Judy Warner is director of business development for the Western region and rF/microwave markets for zentech Manufactur- ing and a frequent contributor to I-Connect007 publications. CATCHINg uP WITH ToM HAuSHERR oF PCB LIBRARIES interview