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From: Dave Curtis <davecurtis AT sonic DOT net>
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On 07/09/2014 10:57 AM, DJ Delorie wrote:
>
>> OR.. That the variations could (for some cases) be applied in a
>> mapping / post processing step during CAM export.
> There's no reason why footprints can't be dynamically generated based
> on parameters.  We started with the m4 library and migrated to a fixed
> library to better support Windows and the parts library dialog, but if
> we can come up with a better way of doing it...
>
In general I'm skeptical of on-the-fly dynamic generation of 
footprints.  It gets hard to hand-tweak to repair some glitch some 
where, and now there is *yet* *another* version tracking problem if you 
want to recreate a specific design.

I'm more inclined to the idea of a generator script plus a rules data 
base yielding a library of static footprints.  New design rules?  No 
problem.. mkdir; chdir; execute script.  Now you have a new static 
library.  I'll admit that this has scaling issues at the enterprise 
level, but I think it scales better than on-the-fly generation version 
control issues.