My recommendation is to rename the Footprint to MfrName_MfrPartNumber

 

I believe this will be the new worldwide naming convention anyway by the year 2015 as the component manufacture's continue to make unique component packages and the IPC-7351 Naming Convention only covers 50% of all the packages in the industry today.

 

This is why PCB Libraries, Inc. developed the FP Designer for non-standard parts and the Footprint naming convention is MfrName_MfrPartNumber

 

 

The IPC-7251 publication is not released and offset lead radial parts are not in it yet.

 

The IPC-7251 for through-hole is supposed to be released by March 2014 but we haven't introduced it to the 1-3 Land Pattern Subcommittee yet. When we do, I'll mention the Offset Lead Radial parts.

 

In the meantime, do you have a recommended Footprint Name that I can introduce to IPC?

 

Good question!

 

 

Today there are over 100 times that many (500,000) unique packages of which 50% are connectors or non-standard packages and this category has been growing steady.

 

I like the IPC-7351 Land Pattern Naming Convention. But we are opening "Parts on Demand" (POD) website this weekend and there will be 200,000 unique mfr. Part Numbers to kick it off and we're adding 5,000 new Part Numbers every day. We were forced to introduce 3 new modifiers in the Land Pattern names - Gull Wing Terminal Tolerance, BGA Ball Size, Thermal Tab Size in order to reduce the duplication in Land Pattern Names where the component dimensions were identical but the lead tolerances, ball sizes and thermal tab sizes are all over the map and produce different footprint results.

 

So component packages used to be 100% standard and now they are 50% standard and in the future the standard package % could go down if history is a measurement of a trend. So my personal belief is that by the year 2016, ALL footprint names will be switched over to MfrName_MfrPartNumber to have a 100% consistent naming convention. However, this will introduce major duplication because Texas Instruments has 8,000 different Part Numbers that all use the same SOP 8-pin package.

 

I don't see a problem because libraries will either be free or very inexpensive and available on demand and memory space will be plentiful. The average hard disk drive in 2016 will be 2TB minimum. I already have three 2TB drives.

 

It's better to associate your footprint names with the mfr. part number to totally eliminate errors and duplication because the IPC-7351 naming convention was intended to handle "Standard Packages", but these will be in the minority in a couple years.