Central Problem Repository

[ajt]

(This was posted as a reply in another thread (BAT54S Symbol/Footprint Wrong).  I am re-posting as a new thread)

If there is no public defect list is there a central place to report and view problems like this?!  There clearly needs to be as others will be making bad PCBs due to these problems. We made a bunch of scrap boards and it would be wrong to let others independently discover problems like this and also make bad boards. 

It is understood that there will be some problems with the master component database given the sheer size of it.  It is also understood that there will be bugs in the software given the complexity.  In some cases,  bugs can cause the software to crash or files to become corrupted.  Users should not have to independently discover these issues over and over again.    An  example of a problem we are warned about is the memory leak issue.  Knowing this, I can restart the program from time to time and not get to the point it crashes and I lose a a lot of work. 

If such a central place existed, NI developers could verify issues, submit them to the internal defect tracking system, and post a knowledge base item about it. 

We need this type of information in one place even if it is a user only list.  What does NI management say about this?  How is it done for other NI products?  How do Orcad, PCAD, etc. do it?   

[lacy]

I would agree with you that there needs to be a public list of all errors and faults that are known.

There is one site that you can report errors to and that is  http://www.ni.kittmaster.com. We have already recieved a few error posts and helped correct them. We mainly deal with component errors and footprint errors. We do not handle software errors as that is beyond our capability.

This site was set up by 3 users of this forum for just such things as this. It has a place to report errors in the foums section. What you have pointed out would be a good idea for our site. We could compile the errors reported into a list in the Knowledgebase area andf keep it updated. I would have to run this by the other administrators and get thier input before anything could be done.

I would agree that information such as this should be provided by NI and not left up to the user to discover, but I do not believe that NI even knows that there are errors until someone bring it to their attention. This tells me that there is something lacking in the quality control area that they may need to address internally. This is not a complaint, but just my opinion.

[kittmaster]

We are addressing this internally at ni.kittmaster.com, we will have a concensus within a day or two as to how we want to handle this to be beneficial to both the users and NI.......Regards, Chris (site admin/ni.kittmaster.com)