CadSoft’s EAGLE software: If you are looking for an easy to use, powerful and affordable schematic capture and printed circuit board design package that gets the job done, EAGLE is the number 1 choice.

1. Eagle Schematic Software
2. Eagle Printed Circuit Board Software
3. Eagle Schematic Capture Software

Last week, Autodesk announced their purchase of CadSoft Eagle, one of the most popular software packages for electronic design automation and PCB layout.

Eagle has been around for nearly thirty years, and has evolved to become the standard PCB design package for electronic hobbyists, students, and engineering firms lead by someone who learned PCB design with Eagle. Resident evil 4 pc games download pc. The reason for this is simple: it’s good enough for most simple designs, and there is a free version of Eagle. The only comparable Open Source alternative is KiCad, which doesn’t have nearly as many dedicated followers as Eagle. Eagle, for better or worse, is a standard, and Open Source companies from Sparkfun to Adafruit use it religiously and have created high-quality libraries of parts and multiple tutorials

I had the chance to talk with [Matt Berggren], former Hackaday overlord who is currently serving as the Director of Autodesk Circuits. He is the person ultimately responsible for all of Autodesk’s electronic design products, from Tinkercad, 123D, Ecad.io, and project Wire, the engine behind Voxel8, Autodesk’s 3D printer that also prints electronics. [Matt] is now the master of Eagle, and ultimately will decide what will change, what stays the same, and the development path for Eagle.

Eagle Licenses

Eagle is famous for the free version of its software. 20 years ago, in the days of Protel and other expensive EDA and electronic design packages, Eagle always had a limited freeware version. Arguably, this is the reason for Eagle’s popularity; a free educational version means schools can use it, and those students will enter the workforce with a desire to use what they already know. A freeware version of Eagle means electronics hobbyists can design their own PCBs at home, using the same tools used by professionals. The freeware version is not going away.

Aside from a freeware version, buying the correct license for Eagle was not easy. Last week, Eagle had five versions available, with different combinations of add ons like the Schematic, Layout, and Autorouter. Each version had limitations on the number of schematic sheets, signal layers, and routing area. For a single user license, there were almost fifty different options, all with different prices.

Now there are only six Eagle products. The commercial licenses range from one schematic sheet, two signal layers, and a 100x80mm routing area to the Ultimate license with 16 signals and a four meter square routing area. For non-commercial licenses, the free educational edition features 99 schematic sheets, six signal layers, and a 160x100mm routing area. This is Eagle getting with the times; a freshly minted engineer must know how to lay antennas on the board, impedance controlled feed lines, DDR routing, how to break out huge BGAs, and everything else a multi-layer board enables.

The big question when it comes to Autodesk licenses is an auspicious cloud looming on the horizon. The Internet is a thing, and now software phones home. Altium’s Circuit Maker is inexorably tied to this cloud, and locks your designs up in an online vault. Will the same be true of Autodesk’s Eagle?

Eagle will, of course, be integrated with other Autodesk products – the entire point of Autodesk buying Eagle is for full-stack hardware development, from mechanical design to electronic. Whether this means Eagle will become a subscription-only model is still up in the air, but from the casual observer’s position it’s doubtful; there are still perpetual licenses of Eagle out there, and right now that’s what Autodesk is selling.

New Features

Despite being a near-standard when it comes to PCB design, there are a ton of features Eagle doesn’t have. To do a design or electrical rule check on a project, you have to press a button – it doesn’t happen automatically. There’s going to be a long, hard look at live DRC and ERC. Autodesk is also “Definitely going to take a close look at routing.” Whether this means push and shove routing, dragging traces around, or anything else the newest version of KiCad does exceptionally well is up in the air, but it must be noted Eagle is now Autodesk’s premier EDA suite.

What does [Matt] have planned that he can say to the press? Eagle’s core, mostly – hierarchy, modularity, mechanical integration (in keeping with integration with other Autodesk products), and revision management. Whether this means the dreaded F/B Annotation has been severed! notification will finally disappear is still up in the air, but one can only hope.

With a new direction comes possible changes to the UI. A decade and a half ago, installing Autocad on a machine would quickly wear off the lettering on your escape key. More modern CAD packages, such as Autodesk Fusion and Inventor are much simpler. Interfaces, even for the most complex pieces of software, have gotten simpler, and there’s no reason Eagle’s baroque UI couldn’t use a few updates.

That said, there is a lot of history in the Eagle UI. It has been around since before Windows 3.1. Some people love it, and any changes to the UI of a beloved program will be met with bricks through windows. A few slight tweaks wouldn’t hurt, though, and keyboard shortcuts are an obvious addition.

Autodesk’s Play For The Future Of Design

Autodesk’s acquisition of Eagle didn’t happen in a vacuum. In 2014, Autodesk bought Circuits.io, an electronic design software that, like Fritzing, is based around the solderless breadboard paradigm. Despite being easily compared to Fritzing, Circuits.io has some fairly advanced capabilities including simulation of breadboarded circuits. It’s not a SPICE simulation, but you can’t look at something like this and not see the future of electronic design.

Circuits.io, Tinkercad, and Autodesk’s series of 123D apps are their play at the Maker market. Yes, you can design a simple circuit and have it do real work, but you’re not going to implement an FPGA or anything designed for EMC compliance with these tools.

When it comes to Serious Business™, Autodesk’s portfolio of electronic design software has been severely lacking. There’s a reason for this: Altium has been working on the problem for several decades, it’s still not perfect. KiCad is old enough to vote, and there are still problems. Eagle, too, is almost thirty years old. Building EDA suites and PCB design software is hard, and possibly the hardest single domain of software development. Autodesk simply can’t spin their own electronic design software and expect it to be good. Eagle was already there, Premier Farnell was selling stuff off, and Autodesk’s purchase of Eagle should come as no surprise.

What this purchase does mean is integration into the rest of Autodesk’s offerings. Already, you can use Autodesk products to build a six-speed transmission, a house, and a spaceship. The addition of Eagle means you can also build a credit card sized ARM dev board. The path forward is to integrate all these capabilities under one roof; you’ll be able to design the electronics for a portable video game console, and take that board file and build an enclosure around it.

On a personal note

I’ve been using Eagle for years now. I’ve known it was a fairly limited tool, and I’ve known about KiCad. I know I need a better electronic design tool. The question I ask myself is, “do I want to spend the time and effort to learn KiCad, when all I really need to do right now is design a simple board that would take an hour in Eagle?”

This is the reason people don’t use better software packages: I know Eagle, and in the time it would take to learn KiCad, I could finish the project I’m working on, make a sandwich, take a nap, and get my boards in the mail. Yes, it’s lazy, but Eagle is good enough.

With the new direction for Eagle, I believe I will never have to learn KiCad. Eagle is about to get good – really good – and I can’t wait to see the first Eagle release under the Autodesk banner.

EAGLE is a scriptable electronic design automation (EDA) application with schematic capture, printed circuit board (PCB) layout, auto-router and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) features. EAGLE stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (German: Einfach Anzuwendender Grafischer Layout-Editor) and is developed by CadSoft Computer GmbH. The company was acquired by Autodesk Inc. in 2016.^[2]

Features[edit]

EAGLE contains a schematic editor, for designing circuit diagrams. Schematics are stored in files with .SCH extension, parts are defined in device libraries with .LBR extension. Parts can be placed on many sheets and connected together through ports.

For more complicated backgrounds, you might use the Background Eraser tool. The Background Eraser Tool The Background Eraser tool samples the color at the center of the brush and then deletes pixels of a similar color as you “paint.” It feels like painting with acid. Let me show you how it works. Photoshop knockout background image.

The PCB layout editor stores board files with the extension .BRD. It allows back-annotation to the schematic and auto-routing to automatically connect traces based on the connections defined in the schematic.

EAGLE saves Gerber and PostScript layout files as well as Excellon and Sieb & Meyer drill files. These are standard file formats accepted by PCB fabrication companies, but given EAGLE's typical user base of small design firms and hobbyists, many PCB fabricators and assembly shops also accept EAGLE board files (with extension .BRD) directly to export optimized production files and pick-and-place data themselves.

EAGLE provides a multi-window graphical user interface and menu system for editing, project management and to customize the interface and design parameters. The system can be controlled via mouse, keyboard hotkeys or by entering specific commands at an embedded command line. Multiple repeating commands can be combined into script files (with file extension .SCR). It is also possible to explore design files utilizing an EAGLE-specific object-oriented programming language (with extension .ULP).

History[edit]

The German CadSoft Computer GmbH was founded by Rudolf Hofer and Klaus-Peter Schmidinger in 1988 to develop EAGLE,^[3][4][5][6] a 16-bit PCB design application for DOS. Originally, the software consisted of a layout editor with part libraries only. An auto-router module became available as optional component later on. With EAGLE 2.0 a schematics editor was added in 1991.^[7] The software used BGI video drivers, and XPLOT to print.^[7] In 1992, version 2.6 changed the definition of layers, but designs created under older versions (up to 2.05) could be converted into the new format using the provided UPDATE26.EXE utility.

EAGLE 3.0 was changed to be a 32-bit extended DOS application in 1994.

Support for OS/2Presentation Manager was added with version 3.5 in April 1996. This version also introduced multi-window support with forward-/backward-annotation, user-definable copper areas, and a built-in programming language with ULPs. It was also the first to no longer require a dongle.

In 2000 EAGLE version 4.0 officially dropped support for DOS and OS/2, but now being based on Qt 3^[8][9] it added native support for Windows and was among the first professional electronic CAD tools available for Linux.^[10] A 32-bit DPMI version of EAGLE 4.0 running under DOS was still available on special request in order to help support existing customers, but it was not released commercially. Much later in 2015, a special version of EAGLE 4.09r2 was made available by CadSoft to ease installation under Windows 7.

Starting with version 4.13, EAGLE became available for Mac OS X, with versions before 5.0.0 still requiring X11. Version 5.0.0 officially dropped support for Windows 9x and Windows NT 3.x/4.x. This version was based on Qt 4^[11][12] and introduced user-definable attributes.

On 24 September 2009, Premier Farnell announced the acquisition of CadSoft Computer GmbH.^[13][4]

Version 5.91.0 introduced an XML-based file format in 2011 but continued to read the older binary format. It could not, however, write files in the former format, thereby not allowing collaboration with EAGLE 5.12.0 and earlier. EAGLE 6.0.0 no longer supported Mac OS X on the Power PC platform (only on Intel Macs), and the minimum requirements were changed to Mac OS X 10.6, Linux 2.6 and Windows XP. This version also introduced support for assembly variants and differential pair routing with length matching and automatic meandering.

Version 7.0.0 brought hierarchical designs, a new gridless topological pre-router called 'TopRouter' for the conventional ripup-and-retry auto-router as well as multi-core support.^[14] Version 7.3.0 introduced native 64-bit versions for all three platforms in 2015. Version 7.6.0 dropped support for the 32-bit Mac OS X version in 2016. EAGLE 6.x.x continues to read EAGLE 7.x.x design files for as long as the hierarchical design feature isn't used.^[14]

On 27 June 2016, Autodesk announced the acquisition of CadSoft Computer GmbH from Premier Farnell, with Premier Farnell continuing to distribute CadSoft products for Autodesk.^[15] Autodesk changed the license to a subscription-only model starting with version 8.0.0 in 2017. Only 64-bit versions remain available any more. The file format used by EAGLE 8.0.0 and higher is not backward compatible with earlier EAGLE versions.

License model[edit]

Since EAGLE version 8.0.0, there are Premium, Standard, Free, and Student & educator editions, with the Standard and Premium versions sold on a monthly or annual subscription basis, requiring online reactivation at least every 14 days (30 days since version 9.0).

Comparison of features for the various available editions:^[16][17]

For comparison, the former (no longer obtainable) perpetual licensing scheme for EAGLE 7.x.x with costs referring to the 2016 prices for a single-user license:^[18]

Community[edit]

A large group of textual and video tutorials exists for beginners to design their own PCBs.^[19]

The DIY electronics site SparkFun uses EAGLE and releases the EAGLE files for boards designed in-house. SparkFun Electronics^[20] is a company that has grown due to the hobbyist market exemplified by Make magazine and others. Many of these companies offer EAGLE part libraries^[21] which define schematic shapes, pinouts, and part sizes to allow for correct layout in the PCB layout editor.

Other popular libraries include Adafruit,^[22]Arduino,^[23] SnapEDA,^[24] and Dangerous Prototypes,^[25]element14 (a subsidiary of Farnell, former owners of CadSoft) also have some libraries available from their site.^[26]

Using ULPs to convert EAGLE .BRD files into Specctra-compatible design files (with file extension .DSN) it is possible to export designs for usage in conjunction with advanced external autorouters such as KONEKT ELECTRA,^[27]Eremex TopoR^[28] or Alfons Wirtz's FreeRouting.^[29] For further touching-up the finished designs in session format can be imported back into EAGLE via .SES to .SCR script file converters.

Controversies[edit]

In spring 1991 the dongle protection scheme of EAGLE 2.0 had been cracked causing a decline of 30% in sales, while sales for a reduced demo version with a printed manual saw a significant increase.^[3] As a consequence in 1992 CadSoft sent thousands of floppy disks containing a new demo of EAGLE 2.6 to potential users, in particular those who had ordered the former demo but had not subsequently bought the full product.^[3] The new demo, however, also contained spy code scanning the user's hard disk for illegal copies of EAGLE.^[3] If the program found traces of such, it would show a message indicating that the user was entitled to order a free printed manual using the displayed special order code, which, however, was actually a number encoding the evidence found on the user's machine.^[3] Users sending in the filled out form would receive a reply from CadSoft's attorneys.^[3][30] The act of spying, however, was illegal as well by German law.^[3][30]

In 2014, EAGLE 7.0.0 introduced a new FlexeraFLEXlm-based licensing model, which wasn't well received by the user community, so that CadSoft returned to the former model of independent perpetual licenses with EAGLE 7.1.0.

Despite announcements to the contrary in 2016, Autodesk switched to a subscription-only licensing model with EAGLE 8.0.0 in January 2017.^[31][32] Without an online connection to a licensing server to verify the licensing status every two weeks (four weeks since version 9.0.0), the software would fall back to the functionality of the freeware version.^[31][32] This caused an uproar in the user community, in particular among those who work in secure or remote environments without direct internet access and users for whom it is mandantory to be able to gain full access to their designs even after extended periods of time (several years up to decades) without depending on third-parties such as Autodesk to allow reactivation (who may no longer be around or support the product by then). Many users have indicated they would refuse to upgrade under a subscription model and rather migrate to other electronic design applications such as KiCad.^[31][32]

Eagle Schematic Software

See also[edit]

Eagle Printed Circuit Board Software

• Video Disk Recorder (VDR) – another software written by Klaus Schmidinger

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abadmin (2019-04-24). 'RELEASE NOTES - Autodesk EAGLE version 9.4.0' (in English and German). Autodesk. Archived from the original on 2019-04-28. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
2. ^'Sale of CadSoft'.
3. ^ ^abcdefg'Trojanisches Pferd' [Trojan horse]. Der Spiegel (in German). SPIEGEL-Verlag Rudolf Augstein GmbH & Co. KG (36): 238, 242. 1992-08-31. Archived from the original on 2017-09-18. Retrieved 2017-09-18.[1]
4. ^ ^abGoldbacher, Alfred (2009-10-02). 'CadSoft: Wie es weitergehen soll' (in German). ElektronikNet. Archived from the original on 2017-09-17. Retrieved 2017-09-17.
5. ^Kuther, Margit (2013-11-25). 'PCB-Design: Wie wichtig sind Communities für PCB-Entwickler?'. Elektronik Praxis (in German). Archived from the original on 2017-09-17. Retrieved 2017-09-17.
6. ^Siering, Peter (2015-02-19). 'Seiner Zeit voraus: Klaus Schmidingers Video Disk Recorder VDR' (in German). Heise online. Archived from the original on 2017-09-20. Retrieved 2017-09-20.
7. ^ ^ab'Unterschiede zwischen EAGLE 1.3 und EAGLE 2.0' [Differences between EAGLE 1.3 and EAGLE 2.0]. EAGLE-Handbuch [EAGLE manual] (in German). CadSoft Computer. 1991. p. A-14.
8. ^Schmidinger, Klaus (2001-10-03). 'Change Font nochmals'. eagle.betatest (in German). Archived from the original on 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
9. ^Schmidinger, Klaus (2003-05-08). 'Abgeschnittenes §-Zeichen'. eagle.betatest (in German). Archived from the original on 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
10. ^Dölle, Mirko (September 2004). 'Schwer auf Draht - Platinen-Layout-Programme Eagle Version 4.11 für Linux'. LinuxUser (in German). Archived from the original on 2017-09-20. Retrieved 2017-09-20.
11. ^Schmidinger, Klaus (2007-09-24). 'EAGLE 4.9'. eagle.betatest. Archived from the original on 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
12. ^'Was ist neu in Version 5?'. CadSoft online (in German). CadSoft Computer GmbH. 2011. Version 5.10. Archived from the original on 2017-10-05. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
13. ^Green, Harriet; Whiteling, Mark (2009-09-24). 'Acquisition of CadSoft Computer GmbH'. Premier Farnell plc. Archived from the original on 2017-09-17. Retrieved 2017-09-17.
14. ^ ^abGoldbacher, Alfred (2014-10-01). 'Leiterplatten-Design-Software Eagle: Version 7 des Adlers ist gelandet' (in German). ElektronikNet. Archived from the original on 2017-09-22. Retrieved 2017-09-22.
15. ^Buetow, Mike (2016-06-27). 'Autodesk Acquires Eagle from Cadsoft'. Printed Circuit Design & Fab. UP Media Group Inc. Archived from the original on 2017-09-17. Retrieved 2017-09-17.
16. ^'Buy Autodesk EAGLE'. Autodesk. Retrieved 2017-02-17.
17. ^'Eagle education or student version'. Autodesk. Retrieved 2017-02-17.
18. ^'Find a plan that fits your needs'. CADSOFT EAGLE. Archived from the original on 2016-08-04. Retrieved 2016-08-04.
19. ^'Turn Your EAGLE Schematic into a PCB'. Instructables.
20. ^Seidle, Nathan (2008-06-19). 'Lecture 8 - EAGLE: Schematics'. SparkFun. Retrieved 2010-03-23.
21. ^'Sparkfun Eagle Library'.
22. ^'Adafruit library github page'. 2018. Retrieved 2018-10-14.
23. ^'Arduino FAQ'.
24. ^'SnapEDA Website'.
25. ^'Dangerous Prototypes library'.
26. ^'Element 14 EAGLE CAD Libraries'.
27. ^'KONEKT Shape Based PCB Autorouting - ELECTRA PCB AutoRouting'. KONEKT. 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-09-24. Retrieved 2017-09-24.
28. ^'TopoR Version History - What's New in TopoR version 6.2'. Eremex. 2017-09-24. Archived from the original on 2017-09-24. Retrieved 2017-09-24. (NB. Includes a list of new features since TopoR 3.0. TopoR 5.4.14203 (2012-12-21) introduced support for EAGLE: 'The Eagle BRD plain-text format is now supported. This format is used by files created in the Eagle 6.0 system.'. Improved in TopoR 5.4.14362 (2013-07-02): 'During import of Eagle BRD-files: in some cases the angle of rotation of pads was disregarded, in some cases the vias’ pad size was assigned incorrectly, sometimes the wires on the inner layers were disappearing.')
29. ^Wirtz, Alfons (2014-03-08) [2004]. 'FreeRouting - Printed Circuit Board Routing Software from FreeRouting.net'. Archived from the original on 2017-09-24. Retrieved 2017-09-24.
30. ^ ^abMöcke, Frank (1992). 'CadSoft rächt sich an Raubkopierern - Adressen aus bestem Hause'. c't - magazin für computertechnik (in German) (10): 16. Archived from the original on 2017-09-18. Retrieved 2017-09-18.
31. ^ ^abcEvenchick, Eric (2017-01-19). 'Autodesk Moves EAGLE to Subscription Only Pricing'. HACKADAY. Archived from the original on 2017-09-19. Retrieved 2017-09-19.
32. ^ ^abcGrannemann, Kathrin (2017-01-24). 'Autodesk Eagle: PCB-Software künftig nur im Abonnement'. Make: (in German). Media Maker GmbH. Heise ID -3605890. Archived from the original on 2017-09-19. Retrieved 2017-09-19.

Further reading[edit]

• Monk, Simon (2014-06-12). Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE: From Schematic Designs to Finished Boards (1 ed.). McGraw-Hill Education / TAB Electronics. ISBN978-007181925-1.
• Scarpino, Matthew (2014-04-01). Designing Circuit Boards with EAGLE - Make High-Quality PCBs at Low Cost (1 ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN978-013381999-1.
• Duncan, Mitchell (2013). Eagle V6: Getting Started Guide - Learning to fly with EAGLE (1 ed.). Elektor-Verlag GmbH. ISBN978-190792020-2.
• Williams, Al (2003-10-15). Build Your Own Printed Circuit Board - Design to Production - Everything You Need to Make Your Own PCBs (1 ed.). McGraw-Hill Education / TAB Books. ISBN978-0-07-142783-8.
• Edwards, Lewin A. R. W. (2003). Embedded System Design on a Shoestring - Achieving High Performance with a Limited Budget. Newnes. ISBN978-0-7506-7609-0. (NB. Includes a copy of EAGLE 4.09r2.)

External links[edit]

Eagle Schematic Capture Software

• https://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle (Autodesk's EAGLE web support forums)
• news://news.cadsoft.de (CadSoft's EAGLE support newsgroups via NNTP)
• ftp://ftp.cadsoft.de/eagle/ (CadSoft's archive of old EAGLE versions)