Hi Everyone!
We’re super excited to announce the latest release of EAGLE, version 9.2, now avail for download in-app via the Home page (Window->Control Panel->Home tab)! Not having a major release in August gave us a chance to complete some longer term projects and this release is a monster! (Surely enough in there to be considered a “major” release by the old standard, now lands as a point-release in this version!)
On with the show!
If you follow my twitter (@technolomaniac) you would invariably have seen SOME of this but I promise there’s more than I shared online so please checkout the full extent of the amazing stuff this team has pulled off below. Tl;dr?
- Single-click fanout all of your GND / PWR nets, even comps w/ Quickroute Fanout
- Digital & Mixed-Mode Simulation (Analog & Digital)!
- Super fast component creation with pin & pad arrays
- STEP Export
- Wire Ends automatically trimmed to pins of parts dropped in series (no overlap)
- New Paint Roller (a’la Format Painter) enables copying properties between objects
- New Layer Stackup dialog makes multi-layer boards super easy
- New Pattern command enables quick and easy linear and circular arrays
- SMASH gone, comps come in “Smashed” by default / text movable from the start
- CAM dialog can be resized / numerous improvements to the CAM workflow!
Quickroute Fanout
Knowing most of you use polygons on either top and/or bottom for those monster nets like GND or power and thus spend a fair bit of your time doing the dance: draw a track, drop a via...draw a track, drop a via...draw a track, drop a via…GOTO 10 we’ve added a new Quickroute->Fanout tool automating those connections.
Before:
After Quickroute Fanout:
Select the new Fanout icon in the main toolbar and choose from several directional options (In, Out, or staggered In & Out) and pick either a component or a signal to fanout. Your eagle life has never been easier!
Digital / Mixed-Mode Simulation
Next up is a MONSTER and just in time for that second or third year Circuit Analysis course you’ve been sweating thru. In this release we’ve introduced both Digital and Mixed Mode simulation to the already powerful analog, SPICE-based simulation we’d added earlier in the year. It’s now possible to use digital sim models (XSPICE) along with your analog components (Berkeley SPICE w/ ngspice extensions) and even generate digital sources using simple Time/Value pairs or CSV file input, as an easy way to leverage digital events in the broader SPICE universe.
Mix and match analog and digital signals with the new AtoD bridge which handles the complexity necessary when converting a signal in one “format”, to something suitable in the other context. With new examples to support you, new models and a new, expanded SPICE library, you will have more than enough to make waves (pun fully intended) whether in the lab, the garage or the classroom.
Pin & SMD Array
The next item will prove a huge time saver when building parts. Whether you need a group of similarly named or numbered pins or pads, the new Pin Array and SMD array tools will make short work of creating even complex parts. Select the Pin or SMD command and the array options will appear in the context toolbar up top.
Paint Roller
If you’ve used EAGLE for any length of time, you’ve probably discovered the Change command, which is super useful when changing a single property of multiple objects, whether iteratively or as a group edit. However what happens when you want to change 3 or 4 or 5 properties of those same objects? This is where the Paint Roller comes into play.
Similar in some ways to Format Painter in MS Office or Illustrator, first select the Paint Roller, then select an object to copy properties from. Next, select the objects you want to pass those properties to. You can do this iteratively (click...click...click) for as many objects as you’d like and this makes things like text formatting, via size / shape, and even simple X or Y alignment super fast. What’s more, you can do all of these changes in a single step!
Wires Snipped To Component-Pins Dropped Mid-Wire
If you’ve built more than a handful of schematics, you’ve almost invariably found yourself rewiring a schematic around the occasional part. Whether you realized you forgot the current limiting resistors for your LED or you just had to drop a decoupling capacitor between your source voltage and GND. In either circumstance, the need to drop a component in series and rewire the net to the appropriate pins has long been a dance between the Split command, the Move command, the Delete command and more. Well, no more!
In EAGLE 9.2, if you drop a part in the middle of a wire (ie. in series) wires will automatically snap to the ends of those part pins, effectively trimming the wires to fit! So now whether you drop all of your parts and then wire your design or you do it piecemeal, a few parts at a time, you have the flexibility to easily add that essential component without an orchestra of rework to follow.
New Layer Stackup Dialog
If you can read this: [2:(1+(2*3)+(14*15)+16):15] ...Bletchley Park called, they're wondering if you're coming to work today! If you have no idea what that is, it’s in fact the way that layers had been added to EAGLE prior to version 9.2...But not anymore!
The current release now moves away from this VI-enthusiast’s encoding to instead use a much simpler, more direct method of editing layers in the Layers tab of the DRC dialog. However for those of you who prefer to add layers via script or the command line, the old approach still works...You can still enter [2:(1+(2*3)+(14*15)+16):15] in the Layer String field anytime you’re feeling too productive. 🙂
Pattern Command
We’ve gone ahead and added the first steps in building a more comprehensive Pattern command. This command will allow you to select an object and create either a linear or circular array of similar objects. Very cool for things like coaxial-style via stitching alongside feedlines or even quick and dirty collections of LEDs & current limiting resistors!
Bye Bye SMASH
This release heralds the end of the SMASHED property for component text. You can restore positions of text, but the text of components can now be moved without needing to perform a SMASH on the component first. All of your legacy designs will load with the text SMASH’ed and all new component placements will have the text in a ready-to-move state.
This was overwhelmingly the state of customer designs when released and thus we’ve made this the default. If you want to restore the text to the library position, right click an part and select Restore Position. (Special thanks to NYC Resistor for hosting me at an EAGLE workshop where I was reminded why we needed to change this. This and the SMD / Pin array both came from teaching real people how to build things with EAGLE and we’ve got LOT more of that planned!)
STEP Export!
Ok, last for this post (and please review the full release notes for WAY more stuff) we’ve added STEP AP214 export from the File->Export Menu. Of course the workflow is far more monolithic than using the EAGLE<>Fusion workflow (eg constraints aren’t preserved in other mechanical environments like they would be in Fusion using the ECAD<>MCAD workflow, which is timeline sensitive) but if you want to take those same files to Inventor, this is means to do it!
Outro
Ok, final word: thank you for being an amazing group of incredible users! Let me close in asking that if you can support the product, please do! We’ve worked super hard to get the product to a level that doesn't require you make a leap to the next highest tier of tool when it’s time to do production hardware. That being said, that takes significant investment...And whether you were contributing to KiCAD or paying for EAGLE, it would be cool if you can support the tools you use every day! I can promise we are not going to relent in our pace of development but we could certainly use your help demonstrating that this is a commercial success and worthy of even more resources! Thank you!
Thanks for sticking it out with us and welcome back to the students and professors that use EAGLE every day! Thank you!
Best regards,
Matt Berggren
Director - Autodesk EAGLE
