I’m a design engineer and often use your site to find parts to use in a new circuit. It is a major attraction to DigiKey.
Your “Linear - Amplifiers - Instrumentation, OP Amps, Buffer Amps” category is not usable for this purpose.
The columns you have are simply not adequate to narrow down a hunt to the point where there are few enough parts to allow reading their data sheets to make a final selection.
I have a proposed solution:
For Op-Amp’s, a set of columns that are adequate to narrow down a search to a short list of parts can be found on the Analog Devices web site Selection Table for Operational Amplifiers (Op Amps) | Parametric Search | Analog Devices
For other amplifier types, they have similar tables with appropriate columns.
(1) I’d wish you would add/include the parameters/columns they have.
Also, on the analog.com site you can download a spreadsheet of a filtered (or unfiltered) table of parts, with values (numbers only) that makes each column sort-able and useful for use in equations.
(2) I’d wish you would allow filtered tables on the DigiKey site to be downloadable as a spreadsheet.
Having the spreadsheet lets me
(a) apply a series of filter functions and multi-level sort functions, and
(b) add computed columns (e.g., like creating a column that multiplies a volts column and a current column to produce a watts column) and then include them in my sorting.
For selecting parts, there are some big pluses for such a DigiKey table.
(1) I could choose a part based on how much stock there was at DigiKey.
(2) It would inform me as to what options there are from other vendors to pre-plan substitutions in a design. In other words, I often look for footprint compatible parts from different vendors that might not be electrically equivalent or identical, but could nonetheless be swapped into a circuit and still have the product meet its specifications. The “alternate” part is put into the BOM data so there are no “hiccups” if the primary part has become scarce.
(3) It would accelerate finding a last minute substitution–a tremendously important task we have more often these days.
I’m sure it’s a lot of work, but more than well worth it. I’m also sure the parts you list will not all fill all columns with a number, but that’s life and also true of ADI’s own parts. Having the info for some parts is a whole lot better than having them for none. The table they make is still tremendously useful. Having the parameters for some parts still reduces the time it takes to put part selection behind me. Once you have these columns, over time, I would expect more vendors to give DigiKey part parameters to fill more columns so designers like me would see their parts appearing in (i.e., not dropping out of) their sort, resulting in some design-in wins.
