topic Working with Electronics Projects (Eagle model) in Fusion API and Scripts Forum

Working with Electronics Projects (Eagle model)

tedEUQZT — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 04:38:18 GMT

Is there any way to link between Eagle ULP/scripts and the Fusion360 data model, such as to run an Eagle ULP on a PCB schematic or PCB layout to extract information - I'm specifically looking to be able to synchronize attributes from electronics components into the 3D model data, a single parameter/attribute would be sufficient if I could find the part Reference Designator (ie 'R23' for the 23rd resistor) and decorate the 3D model object with the unique part number information used in my component library instead of the package name from the 3D footprint/package.

Working with Electronics Projects (Eagle model)

RichardHammerl — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 14:10:51 GMT

Hi @tedEUQZT

just found this question still unanswered.... I hope you are doing well.

Currently you could extract data from schematic and board components and save it as a list or in any other format. But I am sorry, there is no direct connection to the 3D world. The User Language lacks here functionality. It was developed long time before the integration into Fusion.
There a lot of things going on for Electronics in Fusion, and as far as I know there is planned to have a replacement for the User Language which should be more flexible and more Fusion-ish..... but I do not know of concrete plans or of an estimated date to be released or so...

Best regards,

Re: Working with Electronics Projects (Eagle model)

tedEUQZT — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 17:27:42 GMT

@RichardHammerl this is a bit evasive, I know you cannot commit here to some specific implementation date, but either this is a planned feature with a TBD date, or this hasnt been justified as something to do and I shouldn't make any plans on ever having the functionality.

I'm asking because this is a _REQUIRED_ functionality, not a nice to have. If something like this doesn't exist and wont within a reasonable timeframe I may have to take my CAD tooling elsewhere. We know Altium has this capability, as does Mentor, Cadence, etc. - and even EAGLE Standalone has this capability, so using Fusion360 as the front end is LESS capable than the prior tool.

So lets cut to the chase. I know that Fusion360 has some code that exists specifically in the interface between the Eagle binary and the Fusion360 binary that is used to transform data extracted from the Eagle files/database - thats how you create the 3D model of a PCB from the component footprints - if that runs as a ULP within the Eagle environment which can be modified to extend the data fields moved between the tools, that would be one solution. Allow the user to select additional attributes within the EAGLE database to be applied to the entities created during the 2D-to-3D conversion.

A better solution would be to use the connector which exists to probe between the environments for arbitrary ULP calls, returning the EAGLE console output from the ULP back to Fusion360. Then I could parse the ULP output string, and decorate the 3D objects using the standard Fusion360 API object model. I'm sure there are a ton of other use cases for something generic like this, and it would help to make both tools more usable for actual commercial/industrial electronics designers.