Eagle 9.2.0 can not unsmash components

[odinrizhanin]

Hi,

There is new bug in 9.2.0 version: all components both in schematics and layout are smashed by default (their >NAME and >VALUE fields have their own origin).
The problem is that I can not unsmash them.  This leads to other problem: when I try to copy component (i.e. resistor) with repositioned text fields, the copies has other position of text fields..

[rachaelATWH4]

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@gerhard.kremerQ45CU wrote:

and how do we unsmash components with 9.3 ? 

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Select the Group or Info command, an icon will appear in the toolbar to enable you to turn off/on the attribute selection.

It does actually work well and on balance things are easier now you don't need to keep smashing things if you add more to your board. It was a nuisance before not being able to turn off all the additional grab handles and accidentally moving things you didn't want to move. My only request for additional enhancement is to make that icon always visible, not just when Group/Info are active.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[gerhard.kremerQ45CU]

AH.. thanks a lot !

its well hidden. 

Maybe add a checkbox in the configuration or add this "enable attribute selection" icon to the "Attributes" or "Reposition Attributes" as well.

is there maybe a command to put in the eagle.scr to disable attribute selection at startup ?

[Anonymous]

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@gerhard.kremerQ45CU wrote:

is there maybe a command to put in the eagle.scr to disable attribute selection at startup ?

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It is still frustrating to have to unset every single time I open Eagle.

@jorge_garcia I really second this request to either add a command for eagle.scr or add something to options.

[Anonymous]

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@matt.berggren wrote:

[...] When we looked at designs being built by users, the numbers that had part attributes smashed was overwhelming.  So this is the new behavior. [...]

I totally get what you thought there, but I totally disagree that the conclusion you drew is by any means a good one.

Yes, if you order PCBs with Names/Values printed on it, 95 % of the times the library placement is totally wrong.

However, placing names and values is only relevant after all components, traces and vias are placed and not while moving components. So in the original Eagle, it was:

1. creating the schematic, moving stuff around
2. layouting, moving stuff around
3. unsmash all components by using group, selecting all and then using smash (yep, this only took 10 seconds or 2 if you are using shortcuts)
4. moving names and values

Right now, (in those non-stable and totally unfinished versions of Eagle that are released way to soon imho - apparently you know that things are not fine and you release banana software (i.e. it ripens at the user) anyway,) this is more complicated.

1. creating the schematic, moving things around (which is a mess, because I have to click twice on every module, often miss clicking the components or forget grouping names and values as well ending up on unnamed components and names wandering somewhere in the schematic - in the first few days I didn't even know what was happening and it seemed to be buggy because with the default very low contrast of highlighting you don't see well what's selected)
2. layouting (same here, around 50% more clicks to get the same result)
3. then, because the names and values are of course STILL in the wrong position, I can FINALLY move them to the correct position. Here and here only, it's the first time that the mess of loose names/values actually is not a pain in the a...

I see that the "Enable attribute selection" is kind of a solution, but man is this feature hidden - it's not Easter yet, please just display it every time. However, not being able to just move the names and values of SOME components only, I still think that this whole concept didn't make things easier at all.

Off topic: In fact, I would prefer to use the older versions of eagle again, but unfortunately, now my colleagues and I created many components and projects already in the newer version, making it a pain as well to upgrade our working speed while downgrade Eagle. In my opinion (and I guess that of many software developers 10-20 years ago), using software shouldn't be a pain of coping with almost weekly-changing, new yet unfinished concepts, but it should mature in a diverse beta testing group and then be released maybe once a year to really boost the performance of the workflow.

[rachaelATWH4]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I see that the "Enable attribute selection" is kind of a solution, but man is this feature hidden - it's not Easter yet, please just display it every time.

Yep, I agree, it should just be always there, or at least there for every single tool that can be used to manipulate attributes.

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@Anonymous wrote:

However, not being able to just move the names and values of SOME components only, I still think that this whole concept didn't make things easier at all.

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I would have agreed back in 9.2 but actually, I find that being able to have everything always smashed but turn off selection of the attributes works better overall. I don't do one massive cleanup of the silkscreen at the end, I try to keep it vaguely sane as I go along because my boards are so densely populated and it helps to actually be able to read the part references so I need to keep things tidy. Before, I had to smash them to be able to do the tidy up but then couldn't unsmash them as they would be put back again so I ended up with a lot of "loose" attributes making things a little tricky to select. Now, I can move them around as needed and then just turn the attribute selection off. It works much better now for my workflow.

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@Anonymous wrote:

Off topic: In fact, I would prefer to use the older versions of eagle again, but unfortunately, now my colleagues and I created many components and projects already in the newer version, making it a pain as well to upgrade our working speed while downgrade Eagle. In my opinion (and I guess that of many software developers 10-20 years ago), using software shouldn't be a pain of coping with almost weekly-changing, new yet unfinished concepts, but it should mature in a diverse beta testing group and then be released maybe once a year to really boost the performance of the workflow.

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9.3.0 for me is rock solid stable (on macOS, no idea what it's like on Windows) and I use it extensively every day for very complex boards. The new features in the routing which have come along since late v8 and v9 have now made routing a huge amount quicker. I have a v7 license too but if I had to go back to it I would find it much slower and be very frustrated.

To be fair to Autodesk, they have slowed down the release cycle a lot, the feature releases are now only every 3-4 months and the subsequent point releases are bug fix releases. Usually the final bug fix release fixes all the major issues in that series so should be pretty stable. So if you aren't comfortable with running the latest feature release as soon as it comes out, whenever a new feature release comes out then move to the final point release of the previous version.

Now, that said, for some reason they held back on bug fixes in 9.2 and didn't release them until 9.3 which IMHO wouldn't normally be right, all the known bugs in 9.2 should have been fixed with a final 9.2.x release prior to 9.3 so people could use the latest stable version and not be forced into having the latest feature release to get a fully stable build. However, 9.3 had a large number of bug fixes and the features were either in the library end which is cloud hosted, or were enhancements to existing features so actually fairly safe and it does seem pretty solid to me.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[Anonymous]

I agree that the option should be more obvious (and sticky between program launches somehow).

@Anonymous wrote:

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Off topic: In fact, I would prefer to use the older versions of eagle again, but unfortunately, now my colleagues and I created many components and projects already in the newer version, making it a pain as well to upgrade our working speed while downgrade Eagle. In my opinion (and I guess that of many software developers 10-20 years ago), using software shouldn't be a pain of coping with almost weekly-changing, new yet unfinished concepts, but it should mature in a diverse beta testing group and then be released maybe once a year to really boost the performance of the workflow.

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I would also like to see a more mature release channel for day-to-day working, separate to the perpetual beta releases that Eagle goes with these days.

It is quite frustrating to be running into bugs and not fully thought through features in a professional package. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate many of the new features, but I don't really have time to be a guinea pig.

I try to avoid the .0 releases for this reason, but it's quite a crude approach (after a while a .0 release might well be considered stable) and something like this selection issue was not fixed at all in the 9.2.x series.

[clamm2NFTR]

I need to unsmash everything on a board or schematic.

I am going to write down how to do that here so later on I can find this procedure again when I forget.

If anyone has an easier way to do it please let me know.

In schematic or board mode by default everything is smashed. to unsmash, install 9.3.x and then:

a) create a group (it can be the entire schematic)

b) the little "attribute" icon appears to the right of "layer" drop down--looks like a clearance store special tag

c) **right click** on that clearance store special icon "attribute"

d) uncheck "actions" check box

e) NOW **left click** on the clearance store special attribute icon thingy; 

f) all those annoying OCD inducing + symbols everywhere disappear.  Click again and they come back.  Joy!

g) Which means: the left click is a toggle! Joy!

h) flip flop between board and schematic and keep on left clicking attribute and getting the same result, I.e., smashed and unsmashed, which means "Attribute" settings are global. Joy!

Not the UX I thought you Autodesk guys would have come up with for this, but, it does work and adds functionality in an interesting way. 

And Thanks Saint Jorge for helping us get back unsmash.

[rachaelATWH4]

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@clamm2NFTR wrote:

a) create a group (it can be the entire schematic)

b) the little "attribute" icon appears to the right of "layer" drop down--looks like a clearance store special tag

c) **right click** on that clearance store special icon "attribute"

d) uncheck "actions" check box

e) NOW **left click** on the clearance store special attribute icon thingy; 

f) all those annoying OCD inducing + symbols everywhere disappear.  Click again and they come back.  Joy!

g) Which means: the left click is a toggle! Joy!

h) flip flop between board and schematic and keep on left clicking attribute and getting the same result, I.e., smashed and unsmashed, which means "Attribute" settings are global. Joy!

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This seems unnecessarily complex! All that is required to "unsmash" is as follows:

a) Select "Group" or "Info" tools.

b) Left click on the "Enable Attributes" button to toggle the selection of attributes.

This is all you need to do, none of the rest of the steps in your list are appropriate. The only slight issue is, as you have noted, this is global and the single setting affects both schematic and board editors. This really needs to be split so each editor is independent.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[clamm2NFTR]

You are right Rachel, none of my other steps are needed!  I figured there I must be missing something....

Thanks for straightening this out for me.

[hanakp_BUT]

I totally agree the icon should be part of those two commands.  I think the Enable Attribute Selection could be part of Name and Value commands, because they are used to edit these texts, too.

I also wouldn't mind if the icon was permanently displayed, next to zoom icons in the top bar, for example.

[gerhard.kremerQ45CU]

Hello all 

Do i miss something or is this function gone in Eagle 9.4 ?

[pmoulder78]

The function has been moved to the selection filter window.  if you right click in the menu bar you should be able to toggle the selection filter on and off.  You can select the attribute origins there.

I think i prefered the method in 9.3 if i'm honest, i dont really like the selection filter but everyone has their preference i guess.

[rachaelATWH4]

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@pmoulder78 wrote:

I think i prefered the method in 9.3 if i'm honest, i dont really like the selection filter but everyone has their preference i guess.

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When I first tried the Selection Filter I was non-plussed but that was because it's a step change in the way I was working to make best use of it and I had been put off by badly implemented selection filters in previous CAD tools which I always found unintuitive and got in the way. Anyway, I experimented with it and learned how to do things using it and now, honestly, for me, this combined with the Object Inspector, gives one of the best upgrades there has been for my general workflow and it's been implemented across all the editors which is nice. My advice would be to just keep using it and finding the ways you can adapt to make best use of it in your workflow.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[Sirac05]

Hi! An other issue is to update the size name of all components. When I create or download a new device, offen the size name is to big. Before, I  changed the footprint, smashed all and update library. Now, I can't because names are unsmashed. I have to manually click to "Restore position" on each part !

A pain!

At least, add "restore" as ULP function, please!