Is Eagle retired?

[CE3Electronics]

Hi,

I just had the most stressful conversation with sales.  I went to buy another Eagle Premium license and they said it was a discontinued product.

Is it true that Eagle has merged with Fusion to the point that the Eagle software will no longer be available?

Please help.

[jeffg28CLY]

@Anonymous What made you leave OrCad?

I need software with a good autorouter, and also a good API or scripting interface. I remember at least one alternative I had looked at entirely lacked any API/scripting, so that was off the menu.

[Anonymous]

Cadence bought it, swapped the design tools out for their own tool gradually after scavenging the parts of the code they wanted, and the new tool sucked. To deal with legacy designs I literally have a current license for their software but have to use version 6 to get a usable PCB editor.

It is a familiar story, just one that started ten years ago. We know how Eagle ends, with no one using it as a standalone program because it has none of the features that Autodesk uses to draw people to Fusion 360. This makes me nervous about trying literally any proprietary software at this point since DipTrace or whatever are just as likely to get bought out as CadSoft and OrCad were. At least KiCAD cannot be bought and abandoned.

[Anonymous]

I did find this, as I also immediately searched for kicad autorouting.

https://techexplorations.com/blog/kicad/blog-kicad-5-how-to-use-the-freerouting-autorouter

It seems like it is not officially supported but since it's actually open source there seem to be a variety of third party tools to do it. There's also a version 6 on the very near horizon so I'm going to install version 5.99 of kicad and try to get used to it. I don't do a ton of autorouting but it's super useful for initial component placement planning where it's hard to see crossing ratsnest lines to minimize crossovers.

[jeffg28CLY]

"At least KiCAD cannot be bought and abandoned."
Well.... hopefully. But I have seen open-source software get abandoned because the main developer(s) decided to move on, and no one else ever took up the project. Though yes, for KiCad I would agree that it's not likely for it to be abandoned anytime soon; I checked and it looks like it's got around 1000 people on the development team, so that's good.

I'll need to look at Freerouter, and see how active development is on that.

OrCad is actually next on my list to evaluate as a successor to Eagle. Most examples or demos I'm finding online for KiCad are hobbyist level. I'll keep looking though. Is it suitable for something like a 4-layer layout, components on both sides, 1000-1500 components, and hundreds of nets?

OrCad also has things that sound like they're of potential value, such as interfacing with an external MRP system.

[Anonymous]

I'm not enough of an OrCad person to respond knowledgeably about the current state of things. I have seen boards made with older versions with that many layers and components, but I don't know what it's like using their new tools.

[jeffg28CLY]

@jorge_garcia 

So over the weekend I got an order notification and a "Welcome to Fusion 360" email.

What happens when the 1 year expires? Will Eagle's license servers go offline and Eagle ceases to function, or will they continue to remain available?

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @jeffg28CLY 

Got some official feedback, here it is:

• Is this recent action a sign or intended to communicate an EOL of EAGLE?
o Autodesk EAGLE is still available for use as a part of a subscription of Fusion 360. The recent activity to update EAGLE as a part of PDMC, MF, CFD, NF, FCAM, and PMill does not impact the availability EAGLE for those with current subscriptions as a part of Fusion 360. EAGLE is not retired. Autodesk remains committed to electronics design and we are working on some big things that aren’t ready yet. We stated in another thread (link to that thread here?) that we have a lot in the works where the majority of the focus is in Fusion 360 in order to continue to improve the electro-mechanical, electronics, and ECAD/MCAD workflows. As such, EAGLE continues to remain available for your use.

• Email being unavailable that was included in that notification
o Thanks for the notification, this has been corrected and it is active for those with questions regarding the update

Only a small set of users got the e-mail because it only affects users who were on collections, EAGLE used to be included as part of the manufacturing collection and that is changing. 

At the end of the year you just have to purchase a Fusion 360 sub to continue using EAGLE. Before this change EAGLE was included as part of the PDMC so you got it included with that sub. After the year, in addition to the PDMC you would have to get a Fusion sub.

Very few users who were subbed to the PDMC used EAGLE as part of the collection so it didn't make sense to continue to include it.

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Dear @jorge_garcia 

We are paying Autodesk customers for over 20 years now and affected by this. Let me tell you that we are absolutely shocked how Autodesk is treating its customers. Discontinuing to have this included into a package we have been paying for on a 3 days notice by email is in no way acceptable. You agree on a price for a package based on the value you get and just unilaterally removing a part of what you paid for overnight is getting close to fraught.

Worse than that it appears that this mentioned free year of Fusion license is nowhere to be found (at least not in a way we would be able to discover that ourselves) and therefore you basically put all our projects on a forced stop leading to hours of lost development time. I am that close on giving this to our laywers but hope Autodesk will do the right thing and offer a way out of this misery. You should know how to reach me.

Thank you and best wishes, 

Jens

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @Anonymous ,

Working on it to figure out what's going on. I'll report back whatever I find out.

Best Regards,

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I just got word that the Fusion subs are going out, they have just had issues getting them all out. You should have yours shortly.

That's what I know so far, if I find out anything else I'll let you know.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Hi @jorge_garcia,

How about making sure the replacement subs work before switching off the old license?

You know what they call this around here when you pay for something and then it is taken away from you? Stealing...

But even in the subscription world we are apparently living in - we paid for this benefit for a year and now it's taken away after half of that time. How can we ever trust Autodesk again that they are not switching off our Inventor or Vault licenses next? 

And my question remains - who is compensating us for all the development time lost? I am getting more and more the feeling it's time to finally take our CAD and PDM business elsewhere. So disappointed right now... 

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I totally understand your frustration and I empathize with you.

I want to make sure that things are clear, nothing is being taken away. You paid for the year and you are going to have the full year of access to EAGLE that you paid for. It's simply re-organized it used to be included with PDMC now it isn't so to make sure you get what you are entitled to, you are getting a 1 year sub of Fusion360 (which includes EAGLE so in total you would have EAGLE for 18 months) for no additional costs.

So nothing has been taken away, we admit the sub should have been working before the switch was flipped on PDMC, from the information I have it looks like everyone should have there sub within the next 48 hours or so.

I'm truly sorry for all of the inconvenience this has caused you. Once I have more info I'll post.

Best Regards,

[jeffg28CLY]

@jorge_garcia Could Eagle users get some kind of written guarantee from Autodesk that standalone Eagle will continue to remain available for some number of years into the future?

As shown by the responses in this thread, users are on edge (or beyond) about the future accessability of standalone Eagle. For some, Fusion 360 is entirely unusable due to its full reliance on Autodesk's cloud servers, and its mandatory updates. From the user-level perspective, we seeing things like: an email with only a day or two of notice about license changes to current subscriptions and a note about "time to transition to Fusion 360," apparent license server rollout problems that results in zero productivity, no software updates to Eagle since May, 2020, and no timeline on when any updates to Eagle are expected to show up.

By itself, the lack of concrete information on future plans is enough to get current customers working on making a transition, but it's not going to be to Fusion 360, it's going to be to another company's software.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your empathy and for following up with this within Autodesk. Looking forward to get this sorted out asap.
I second jeffg's message above on getting some clear, written plan and confirmation from Autodesk on how Eagle will continue to evolve. A cloud based solution ain't an option for us so we have to get clarity on this now in order to take the right steps moving forward.

[mp54de]

"A cloud based solution ain't an option for us so we have to get clarity on this now in order to take the right steps moving forward."

THIS 👆

[DFxLab]

You already have some official answer here : https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/will-eagle-as-a-standalone-product-disappear-following-th...

p/9701766#M31068

[bbourbin]

Lucky I decided to check the forums, since I hadn't seen an update to EAGLE in a really long time.. to find out the program will not be updated any longer, and folks need to migrate to Fusion 360. When CadSoft was purchaed by Autodesk and I needed to evaluate which electronics design tool I should adopt moving forward, EAGLE won out because it was what I was most familiar with, have many projects designed and sold using it, and that all files could be kept local (i.e. not forced to be stored on some other companies cloud, with all the pitfalls that come with that).

That was not a long time ago, and seems have to make the decision once again. I am not sure who Autodesk sees that their use-case for the new Fuson 360 electronics design tool, but it is not a professional. Fuson is way too clunky and not responsive on very well equiped hardware, but I understand they are the owners of EAGLE now and have some sort of business reason for doing this move.

I remember reading in their "Reasons for staying with EAGLE" when Autodesk aquired the software, was that you would keep all your files local, unlike their main competition at the time. Guess for business reasons it is better to lock their customers into their ecosystem.

I am disappointed by this decision, and after using EAGLE for decades, it will be a shame to lose all the content and assets I've built up. Maybe one of the other competitors have ways of importing from EAGLE. My sub is up for renewal in June, so I'll see if Autodesk changes their views around the standalone version of EAGLE that they advertized as being updated, with no locking into cloud storage.

Brett

[mdwagner]

@jorge.garcia @matt.berggren Hi, I have been using EAGLE since 2017 and Fusion 360 since 2015 and have a few questions about the future of EAGLE. Previously, you mentioned you might have more information closer to March, so hopefully, I can now get these answered.

Will the graphics engine rewrite only apply to Fusion 360, or will it also be available for standalone Eagle? On that note, EAGLE has not been updated in 8 months; will it ever receive an update again?    

If not, and Fusion is the only future for EAGLE, will there ever be an option to disable the Fusion cloud and use it entirely locally?

We are nearing the end of a project right now and do not want to start a new one with the current uncertainty of EAGLEs future, especially as we cannot use cloud storage, which has pushed us away from fusion last several years.

Thank you for your support,

Michael.

[ayorkR8GD6]

@jorge_garcia 

"Autodesk EAGLE is still available for use as a part of a subscription of Fusion 360. The recent activity to update EAGLE as a part of PDMC, MF, CFD, NF, FCAM, and PMill does not impact the availability EAGLE for those with current subscriptions as a part of Fusion 360. EAGLE is not retired. Autodesk remains committed to electronics design and we are working on some big things that aren’t ready yet. We stated in another thread (link to that thread here?) that we have a lot in the works where the majority of the focus is in Fusion 360 in order to continue to improve the electro-mechanical, electronics, and ECAD/MCAD workflows. As such, EAGLE continues to remain available for your use."

Unfortunately the truth is not represented in this statement.   I wish Autodesk would admit they had a horrible decision, and get rid of the Fusion 360 part of Eagle.    @jorge_garcia I would request you quit bending the truth to the people that funded your software.    

[matt.berggren]

Thanks for your post. When you say “get rid of the Fusion 360 part of EAGLE” this is not accurate. There is still a robust bi-directional workflow from EAGLE to Fusion that still works and will continue to work. EAGLE had never entitled a user to Fusion but the Fusion license entitles someone (in the system of entitlements we use when you login with your email address) to also use EAGLE. Can you please elaborate on your concerns and what you feel is missing? Purchasing Fusion will enable you to also use EAGLE premium. EAGLE premium used to also require you purchase Fusion. Now the same cost (in fact slightly less) enables you to use both and the synchronization continues to work from EAGLE to Fusion and back again.

Not sure where the confusion is coming from but I thought it important to clarify.

Best regards,

Matt Berggren
Director - EAGLE / Fusion 360 Electronics / Tinkercad