All New Octopart Categories!

We’ve been working hard making it easier and faster to find parts on Octopart, most recently introducing Add to BOM feature, new detail pages and improved sorting by price. Today, we are excited to present all new Octopart categories! A good category taxonomy is essential to allow a quick discovery of relevant parts, so we’re thrilled to be taking a big step towards improving how people discover parts on Octopart.

The new category tree is flatter and leaner and has a total of 14 top level categories which you can now access from the home page. To build the new tree, we spent several months identifying the categories needed to accurately capture every part on Octopart — millions of parts across hundreds of distributor feeds. This research guided us to create two new sections — Electromechanical and Circuit Protection — and to separate Discrete Semiconductors from the Integrated Circuits category as well as to make several other changes. Our new category taxonomy has some exciting new features that will make discovering new parts easier than it was on Octopart before:

• New category taxonomy is flatter and leaner: We don’t exceed a maximum depth of three nodes per category. This will help you get to the part you want quickly, without having to click through several sub-categories to get to the node you are looking for. A few examples of the new leaner taxonomy: Cables and Wire >> Wire Protection and Management >> Heat Shrink Tubing Circuit Protection >> Fuses Connectors >> Headers and Wire Housings Electromechanical >> Relays >> Solid State Relays Optoelectronics >> Displays >> LCD, OLED, Graphic Displays Passive Components >> Resistors >> Chip SMD Resistors Tools and Supplies >> Soldering Supplies and Tools

• Category information is now on the part detail pages: When we launched new detail pages recently, one of the big changes we made was to display the category information for every part on these pages. You can access this information while viewing distributor offers to get more information about the part. Try searching for a voltage regulator, power relay, microcontroller, and capacitor to see their category information.

• New sections for Electromechanical and Circuit Protection: We created a new Electromechanical category and consolidated Audio, Motors and Drives, Relays, Switches, and Thermal Management into it. Looking for a power relay? Try clicking on the new subcategory for Power Relays and search over 15,000 relays. We have also created a new category for Circuit Protection and added ESD and Protection ICs, Fuses, PTC Resettable Fuses, TVS Diodes, and Varistors so that components commonly used for circuit protection are easier to find.

• Semiconductors and Actives are separated into Discrete Semiconductors and Integrated Circuits (ICs): Transistors, Diodes, and Thyristors have a section of their own in Discrete Semiconductors. All the Integrated Circuits (ICs) are in a separate section of their own and cover wide range of ICs for functions ranging from clock and timing to data conversion, embedded processing, amplification, logic, and power management. This will allow you to quickly get to an IC or a diode that you are looking for and you can choose from over 200,000 discretes and 800,000 ICs.

• More detailed passive components section: Previously, we called several different categories of capacitors and resistors under the term “Single Components,” and relied on attribute filters for the different types of capacitors or resistors. In the new taxonomy, we have broken the single components into some popular subcategories. Capacitors now have Aluminum Electrolytic, Ceramic, Film, Mica, Polymer, and Tantalum sub-categories, and resistors now have Chip SMD, and Through-Hole resistors.

You can learn more about the different categories of parts, by reading our blog series on how to select a capacitor, resistor, inductor, and connector, which discuss the merits, demerits, and common applications of parts in each category. If you have any comments or suggestions on your discovery experience on Octopart, drop us a note in our Slack room or in comments below.