[resters]

As a newb to PCB design this is dead on. I had to resort to using Circuitmaker (free Altium with a 2 private project limit) to feel confident doing my first few boards.

Circuitmaker uses octopart libraries and maintains its own footprint libraries. When any user creates a footprint in a public project it becomes part of the public (git-based) library for the part.

I get it that some designers want to do all their own footprints and make everything their own, but for someone getting ramped up having easily accessible parts libraries dramatically reduces the amount of tangential knowledge one must have to make usable PCBs.

I'm definitely going to try this out. I am a big fan of Circuitmaker but obviously using something that is 100% open source is a big benefit.