We sat down to talk to Macrofab Engineering Podcast hosts Parker Dillmann and Stephen Kraig. Macrofab is a PCB and electronics manufacturing platform. Their mission is:

“A better way to build electronics through a redefined experience, innovative technology, scale, and agility.”

We share a passion for the hardware space and had a great time talking about what we do, how we started, and where we are going.

Conversation highlights

Here are some highlights of interesting questions and our answers from our conversation with Macrofab:

Where did the name AllSpice come from?

Spice is, as you may already know, synonymous with circuit simulation in the hardware world. There are multiple [fill-the-blank] Spice tools in the space, and we think of them as examples of powerful yet disjointed solutions that are so commonplace in hardware. We want to be a unifying platform for the hardware development ecosystem and chose the name “AllSpice” as a reminder of that. If you’re an insider, you understand what we mean when you hear the name. If not, you probably think we sell food.

How does AllSpice affect the engineer? The manager?

AllSpice helps engineers with revision control and collaboration. It brings the infrastructure of agile software practices to the hardware development process. As an engineer, you can continue to design on your favorite ECAD tool, and AllSpice comes in to help with the project management component. It makes it easy to see the revision history and isolate the file changes between two points in time.

For managers, AllSpice provides visibility into their team’s project status as well as simple snapshots of product updates. Looking at an AllSpice diff, you can quickly identify what is different from the previous revision without needing to know the full design history. This helps when evaluating design releases, for example. 

How is your diff functionality implemented?

Text-based code, AllSpice has a visual component as well as a text list that includes attribute changes as well.

The rest of the conversation 

Listen to the full episode down below, or visit the Macrofab Engineering Podcast page for Episode #210.

Curious about some of the other ways AllSpice can improve your hardware development? Let us know below so we can tackle them in a future post, or send us an email at [email protected].