On Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:19:52 -0500, "Joel" <joelbenway@gmail.com>
wrote:

I've been using Eagle for more than 5 years now. A little tricky to
use it. You don't select an object, and then choose what to do with
it. You first select what you want to do, and then you select objects
to apply that action to. That is a little odd at the beginning, but
once you get used to it, you work faster.

Copy&Paste and Cut&Paste are somewhat odd. Cadsoft should improve
that.

The C scripting language that it includes is very powerful. For
instance, if you need to place pads for LEDs, tracks, etc, with
circular symmetry (every 22.5º, for instance), you can easily program
that. By hand, it would by a hell, not to say impossible.

Best,
Jon

Isn't that what grids and snap are for?

On 2008/Apr/07 10:19 AM, in article
pOidnUGOS6oVsGfanZ2dnUVZ_ramnZ2d@giganews.com, "Joel" <joelbenway@gmail.com>
wrote:

Disclaimer: My company sells EAGLE online to customers in North America
(see sig below). But I'm also an engineer and I use EAGLE for _real_ work
on a daily basis.

I like EAGLE. Version 4 and previous did take some getting used to the UI.
This is a stumbling block for some people. The main reason is that EAGLE's
motif was to pick your function, then pick your object. The idea being that
you typically will perform the same function on multiple objects. And in
reality I find this to be true, thus this i/f is generally the optimal way
to go.

However, Windows and other modern UI's are all object based: pick your
object then your function. Anyone who is used to this will find EAGLE's old
UI a bit obtuse at the start. But trust me, once you use it a lot you see
the brilliance of it all.

That all said, version 5.0 (due out soon) has the best of both worlds. You
can use it like 4.1 if you're used to that or want to use it, and you also
right-click on any object and then pick your function. So this should
satisfy most complaints about the UI. It is also based on QT4 which means
it runs natively on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X with file compatibility
between all platforms.

The real reason I like it is that the schematic and PCB are coming from the
same database (other s/w has this to, PCB123 from Sunstone is one example).
Thus there is no forward or back annotation--all modifications are applied
to both simultaneously. This is a big bonus and seriously cuts down on
chaos when things change.

To some degree you can get used to any tool, but I have used pretty much
every major tool out there and when its my money on the line (like it is in
my business) then I'll choose EAGLE every time since it provides the best
value for the dollar that I've ever seen. This argument is coming from a
professional point of view where things like unlimited, free support forever
and the cost of crashes and other quality issues have a real cost associated
with them. For hobbyists the value equation is different so using it for
complicated design may not make as much sense if you count your time as
worthless or can make due with something that is completely free.

That all said, I like gEDA from the point of view that it seems to be
getting to the point that it is a viable option for some and as it gets
better it is going to force commercial products to get better too. That
helps us all.

Cheers,

James.

--
James Morrison
www.eagletoolkit.com
EAGLE Design Expert
North American Online EAGLE Dealer
EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On 11 Apr, 20:05, Jon <a...@b.c> wrote:
With Pulsonix I just use a polar grid, which is even easier!

Leon

On 2008-04-11, Leon <leon355@btinternet.com> wrote:
Grids only work for evenly spaced stuff. If your component has
a list of hole positions that dont line up with a grid, then a
script or command-line interface is the only way to fly. I
guess you could create a whole set of grids, but that's a lot
more work than just pasting the list of hole positions into a
script.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! You can't hurt me!!
at I have an ASSUMABLE
visi.com MORTGAGE!!

In article <pOidnUGOS6oVsGfanZ2dnUVZ_ramnZ2d@giganews.com>,
Joel <joelbenway@gmail.com> wrote:
PADS Power PCB 3.5.1 (version from around 2000) and started with PADS for
DOS. I would have started with DOS OrCAD PCB tool, but it was more
expensive than PADS at the time. I have the Specctra auto-router for it
(withdrawn when Cadence bought it). Never tried the Blaze auto-router. Oh,
I used this with DOS OrCAD and Viewdraw.

I've since used Cadance tools: Allegro and Concept. They annoy me.

Actually that brings up another question: do people actually use
auto-routers anymore? I used Specctra successfully on a bunch of PCB
projects. Everyone who uses Allegro seems to hand-route everything.
Perhaps the setup work to use the auto-router for high speed signals is as
much as just hand routing them.

Either that or the PCB contractor wants more billable hours :-)

--
/* jhallen@world.std.com AB1GO */ /* Joseph H. Allen */
int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--q=3&(r=time(0)
+r*57)/7,q=q?q-1?q-2?1-p%79?-1:0%79-77?1:0<1659?79:0>158?-79:0,q?!a[p+q*2
]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}

jhallen@TheWorld.com (Joseph H Allen) writes:
I hand route sensitive traces, then see what the autorouter can do.
Sometimes the autorouter does well enough that I just accept it, other
times it either can't route completely or makes a horrible mess out of
it. I use those results (er, after undoing) to further hand-route the
problem traces, then autoroute again and see what happens.

Joseph H Allen wrote:

Yes, and they give quite good results, used correctly.
On large layercounts, they can pull ahead of manual design easily.

They are so fast on modern PCs, they can be used as
a) fast prototype-generation. The SW team (often much larger than the
PCB divn), often cannot start detailed work, until they have a
functional lash-up.
b) as Placement checks. You can trial half a dozen placement
combos, and choose the best one for clean-up, in a morning.

That can happen, but there are also the Steerable-Shove routers.
Not sure if you call those auto-routers or not ?
They allow the operator to direct the path, and the router does the
detail-maths. PADS has two of these.

That comes into it as well

-jg

Joseph H Allen wrote:

If you run an autorouter, it puts down many traces exactly as you
would have; straight runs between pads that are next to each other,
etc. I run the autorouter, delete all the traces that aren't run
the way I would have run them, and do my manual layout from there.
this cuts the time needed to finish the job in half.

If you do a good job of placing the parts and run the autorouter
with the right design rules and let it rip-up-and retry overnight,
it gets a surprisingly large percentage right, and even the nets
that need to be routed manually often have the pins already
swapped the way I would have done it.

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

On 12 Apr, 02:40, jhal...@TheWorld.com (Joseph H Allen) wrote:
I sometimes use the Pulsonix autorouter, it does a very good job. I
route the critical tracks manually, of course.

Leon

Anton Erasmus wrote:
As I understand it, the reason Electra is similar to Specctra is that it
is written by the guys that originally wrote Specctra, but didn't move
to Cadence. So it works in a similar way, and will give similar
results. It is not as flexible as Specctra, but good enough for the
great majority of autorouting tasks, much faster, and *much* cheaper.
We also have an old Specctra license, but I tested out Electra's demo
version - when we look for a second autorouter license, it will be Electra.

Electra/specctra (at least, the old Specctra that I have used) have a
very rigid autorouting philosophy, running routes on 90 degree paths
with alternate layers biased in alternate directions. That works well
for quite a lot of boards, but can give poor results for some sorts of
cards - it can be difficult to get it to route *round* an area or
component, rather than *through* it. And for complex boards, you need
to do a fair amount of work setting up your "do" file with commands to
get routing to run as you want. But once that's done, run times are
fast, and it's very easy to just rip it all up and redo your routing
when you change the board, or re-arrange your components.

For a completely different type of autorouting, have a look at these two
links (I haven't tried them myself yet).

http://www.freestyleteam.com/index.p...=topor&lang=en
http://www.freerouting.net/

On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:40:16 +0000 (UTC), jhallen@TheWorld.com (Joseph
H Allen) wrote:

I use an old version of specctra. Before Cadence bought them out.
Cadence has priced specctra so that only very big companies can afford
it. The full router is in the order of US$100,000. I have used
specctra with Tango PCB, Protel 98, Protel 99 and have tried it using
the Altium evaluation version. Even the old version of specctra I have
outperforms the latest router in Altium by a huge margin. One of the
demo boards which they use to demonstrate the routing capabilities of
Altium's auto router, routes in 8 layers using their router. This
takes almost 2 hours on quite a fast PC. Specctra routes this board on
8 layers using the same design rules in less than 1 minute. It routes
this same board on 2 layers in something like 8 minutes, still using
the same set of design rules.
The only other router I have seen that comes close to specctra's
capabilities is the Electra router. This can be purchased at a
reasonable cost. There is even a Linux version available. Can any of
the open source packages use this router ? It uses exactely the same
file format as specctra.
AFAIK Pulsonix uses the Electra router.

Regards
Anton Erasmus

Anton Erasmus <nobody@spam.prevent.net> writes:

Vutrax uses this too. (Not open source but there is a free 256 pin
limited version). I don't know for sure if the free pin-limited
version works with the autorouter, would have to try it.


--

John Devereux

On Apr 11, 3:05 pm, Jon <a...@b.c> wrote:
I tried Eagle and the oddities of the UI were rather tricky to
initially learn. Then I came back to it 6 months later and they were
just as tricky to learn the second time! If you don't use a program
very often, it is pointless to try to use such an odd bird as Eagle
(so to speak). There are much better alternatives.

As to the scripting, I have thought scripting could be useful, but I
have yet to find a real need for it. Your example can easily be done
by using a simple spread sheet table to calculate the coordinates for
the 16 LEDs and copying them to the parts. At least you can do this
in FreePCB since it lets you directly enter the coordinates if you
want.

That does give me an idea for a suggestion to the author of FreePCB.
I don't know that a scripting capability is needed, but a hierarchical
capability might be. That would let you combine say, four LEDs in an
arc to be placed four times to form your circle. To be maximally
useful, it should also include traces.

On 2008/Apr/07 10:19 AM, in article
pOidnUGOS6oVsGfanZ2dnUVZ_ramnZ2d@giganews.com, "Joel" <joelbenway@gmail.com>
wrote:

Let me try this again, having some hiccups with my news server...

------------------------

Disclaimer: My company sells EAGLE online to customers in North America
(see sig below). But I'm also an engineer and I use EAGLE for _real_ work
on a daily basis.

I like EAGLE. Version 4 and previous did take some getting used to the UI.
This is a stumbling block for some people. The main reason is that EAGLE's
motif was to pick your function, then pick your object. The idea being that
you typically will perform the same function on multiple objects. And in
reality I find this to be true, thus this i/f is generally the optimal way
to go.

However, Windows and other modern UI's are all object based: pick your
object then your function. Anyone who is used to this will find EAGLE's old
UI a bit obtuse at the start. But trust me, once you use it a lot you see
the brilliance of it all.

That all said, version 5.0 (due out soon) has the best of both worlds. You
can use it like 4.1 if you're used to that or want to use it, and you also
right-click on any object and then pick your function. So this should
satisfy most complaints about the UI. It is also based on QT4 which means
it runs natively on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X with file compatibility
between all platforms.

The real reason I like it is that the schematic and PCB are coming from the
same database (other s/w has this to, PCB123 from Sunstone is one example).
Thus there is no forward or back annotation--all modifications are applied
to both simultaneously. This is a big bonus and seriously cuts down on
chaos when things change.

To some degree you can get used to any tool, but I have used pretty much
every major tool out there and when its my money on the line (like it is in
my business) then I'll choose EAGLE every time since it provides the best
value for the dollar that I've ever seen. This argument is coming from a
professional point of view where things like unlimited, free support forever
and the cost of crashes and other quality issues have a real cost associated
with them. For hobbyists the value equation is different so using it for
complicated design may not make as much sense if you count your time as
worthless or can make due with something that is completely free.

That all said, I like gEDA from the point of view that it seems to be
getting to the point that it is a viable option for some and as it gets
better it is going to force commercial products to get better too. That
helps us all.

Cheers,

James.

--
James Morrison
www.eagletoolkit.com
EAGLE Design Expert
North American Online EAGLE Dealer
EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On 2008/Apr/12 11:29 AM, in article
209e6958-dcc3-4f8f-a76a-014f11522b94...oglegroups.com, "rickman"
<gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi rickman,

With version 5.0 of EAGLE (due out soon) some of this is alleviated. You
can now right click on an object and pick your function. It is a bit
different from other UI's but to be fair, most tools are slightly different.

What do you consider "that odd"? I'd be interested to know.

There are lots of things you can do. I have tools (for sale, disclaimer)
that auto create packages in EAGLE from a small list of IPC7351 parameters,
import/export various netlist formats, and others to come. You can also
emulate higher level functions that are available on more expensive tools.
Or if you have something you need to do in a repeated way his can be useful
too, faster and repeatable.

Hierarchy is the one big thing that I see EAGLE missing. I'll see what pull
I have as a dealer to get this included in the next major version. They
have already stated a desire to use XML file structure which is great for a
lot of reasons. Of course, their revision cycle is about 2 years or more so
don't hold your breathe

James.

--
James Morrison
www.eagletoolkit.com
EAGLE Design Expert
North American Online EAGLE Dealer
EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On 2008/Apr/12 7:15 AM, in article
ut5104930skmkole01o1pt2i38dulvrfpv@4ax.com, "Anton Erasmus"
<nobody@spam.prevent.net> wrote:

Hello,

I'm not sure of the open source ones, but EAGLE can use Specctra. I haven't
done it myself but I understand that it does work.

James.

--
James Morrison
www.eagletoolkit.com
EAGLE Design Expert
North American Online EAGLE Dealer
EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

David Brown wrote:

also see:

I just spent 20 minutes trying to find a price for the
TopoR topological autorouter, AuTOP automatic component
placement, and FSCapture schematic editor, with no luck.

Does anyone know roughly how much these cost?

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/>

On Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:38:00 +0200, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.removethisbit.no> wrote:

[snipped]
Thanks, these look very interesting, especially the topor router. It
looks like they took the same Protel Demo board that it's router does
in 8 layers, and do it in 2 layers using topor, the same number of
layers that specctra also manages.
The any angle routing should allow it to route "funny" shaped boards
which is a problem with specctra.

Regards
Anton Erasmus

On 2008/Apr/07 10:19 AM, in article
pOidnUGOS6oVsGfanZ2dnUVZ_ramnZ2d@giganews.com, "Joel" <joelbenway@gmail.com>
wrote:

Let me try this again, it didn't get through the first few attempts....

-----------------------

Disclaimer: My company sells EAGLE online to customers in North America
(see sig below). But I'm also an engineer and I use EAGLE for _real_ work
on a daily basis.

I like EAGLE. Version 4 and previous did take some getting used to the UI.
This is a stumbling block for some people. The main reason is that EAGLE's
motif was to pick your function, then pick your object. The idea being that
you typically will perform the same function on multiple objects. And in
reality I find this to be true, thus this i/f is generally the optimal way
to go.

However, Windows and other modern UI's are all object based: pick your
object then your function. Anyone who is used to this will find EAGLE's old
UI a bit obtuse at the start. But trust me, once you use it a lot you see
the brilliance of it all.

That all said, version 5.0 (due out soon) has the best of both worlds. You
can use it like 4.1 if you're used to that or want to use it, and you also
right-click on any object and then pick your function. So this should
satisfy most complaints about the UI. It is also based on QT4 which means
it runs natively on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X with file compatibility
between all platforms.

The real reason I like it is that the schematic and PCB are coming from the
same database (other s/w has this to, PCB123 from Sunstone is one example).
Thus there is no forward or back annotation--all modifications are applied
to both simultaneously. This is a big bonus and seriously cuts down on
chaos when things change.

To some degree you can get used to any tool, but I have used pretty much
every major tool out there and when its my money on the line (like it is in
my business) then I'll choose EAGLE every time since it provides the best
value for the dollar that I've ever seen. This argument is coming from a
professional point of view where things like unlimited, free support forever
and the cost of crashes and other quality issues have a real cost associated
with them. For hobbyists the value equation is different so using it for
complicated design may not make as much sense if you count your time as
worthless or can make due with something that is completely free.

That all said, I like gEDA from the point of view that it seems to be
getting to the point that it is a viable option for some and as it gets
better it is going to force commercial products to get better too. That
helps us all.

Cheers,

James.
--
James Morrison
www.eagletoolkit.com
EAGLE Design Expert
North American Online EAGLE Dealer
EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **