If it is true what they say
"37% of design is choosing components"
then having the right search engine will save a lot of time during the design process.
To help make design easier, Autodesk teamed up with Octopart to bring electronic components into Autodesk PLM 360. Autodesk is using the Octopart API to bring pricing and availability information of over 20 million electronic components into PLM 360.
I'm not a big electronics user, but I know that other custom search engines from the likes of McMaster-Carr, Grainger, and GlobalSpec have saved me countless hours hunting down mechanical components. And since Octopart is an open electronics part search engine, you may never have to thumb through that Digikey catalog again but still get your favorite components.
My inspiration and a place to get more information:
http://mikewatkinsweb.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/octopart-and-autodesk-plm-360.html