A method for generating an electronic component representation for use in a printed circuit board design tool includes providing a plurality of training datasheets, learning, during off-line symbol processing, to identify component symbols based on the training datasheets, and storing in memory the learned identified symbol characteristics. Also included is learning, during off-line footprint processing, to identify component footprints based on the training datasheets, and storing the learned identified footprint characteristics in memory. Once off-line training has been performed, a user provides a selected component datasheet containing a component to use in the printed circuit board design tool, and on-line processing extracts a component symbol and footprint of the selected component based on the learned symbol and learned footprint characteristics. The extracted symbol and footprint are merged to generate a completed component corresponding to the selected component, which is then provided to the printed circuit board design tool for use in the design and layout of the PCB.