Placing via during routing on v9.1.3 macOS. Bug??

[Anonymous]

I've been an Eagle user for 8 years and just upgraded from v6. Generally not having to many problems with the jump in features, but one thing which is driving me mad is that holding shift and left clicking while routing doesn't seem to place a via like it used to. The manual says it does, a blog post about it says it does, but it doesn't.

Pressing the spacebar to switch to another layer does work, the caveat is that the layer has to be visible to do that and when I'm routing to a ground or power plane I don't really need (or want) to see that layer.

I'm running v9.1.3 on macOS - I suspect this is a bug, but it would be really nice if it was fixed quickly as it's really, really, really annoying and taking me a lot of time to work around. Especially as you can't middle click to change layers on a Macbook either.

[jm2morri]

I see the same behaviour on 9.1.3 on Mac.

[rachaelATWH4]

I don't think it's a bug. It drove me insane for a while when I moved from v7 to v8 but I've sort of got used to it now although I do think the old way was easier and faster. But from the explanations that have previously been given I think its to do with push & shove and ensuring that it works correctly for that.

One thing to note, if you are a v6 user migrating to v9. Go to Options->Set... and in the misc tab turn off the "Group Command Default On" setting. EAGLE will become a lot more familiar after you do this (won't fix this issue though!).

Best Regards,

Rachael

[jm2morri]

Thanks Racheal,

It is a bug, either in the functionality or in the help file because those don't agree as initially reported.  Maybe the functionality change is intended but then the documentation needs to be updated.

Say what you want about EAGLE documentation but the original German-esque ethos about having clear, concise, and accurate help files is something that should NOT be lost.  There were lots of ways to improve it for sure but that historical philosophy should not be lost.

As for moving from V6 to V9 (which I have done recently, at least on some projects), I don't mind the new grouping.  If we could go back and search the old news server posts, you'll see I had suggested pretty much what was implemented over a decade ago.  So I'm a believer in that for sure.

But what hasn't changed is configuring some of the SET parameters to make EAGLE form better.  My favorite two are:

SET Option.ToggleCtrlForGroupSelectionAndContextMenu 1

This gets back the old V4 functionality of right-click applying the current command to the currently defined group.  Much more efficient than a right-click menu for power-users.  With this set you have to hold down CTRL and right-click to get right-click menu.  But I rarely use that as all commands are assigned to keys.

SET Option.RepositionMouseCursorAfterContextMenu 1

 When I do use the right-click menu (with CTRL for me) then I don't want the mouse cursor to move when I select a command from that menu.  So this options will put the cursor back to the point it was when the right-click menu was activated.  Absolutely required if you're trying to move a group by a specific number of grids.

I know you know this @rachaelATWH4, this is for other users who want to turbo-charge EAGLE even further.

Actually I think I'll create a new thread for others to contribute any of these SET commands that they use and WHY.  I'm sure there's at least one that I might not fully understand.

James.

[Anonymous]

It'd be useful to know if this behaviour is the same on platforms other than macOS. If it isn't, it's a bug on macOS. Otherwise it's a removal of a feature from a previous version which isn't documented AFAIK and the current documentation is wrong.

Dan

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous,

I hope you're doing well. The documentation in this case is wrong, as far as I know we had updated it all. Could you give me the specific blog that mentions this as well as the manual page you ran into this. That way I can pass it to our documentation team to get it corrected. This is an area we are having a lot of difficulty keeping up, there are a lot of changes some of them huge that need to be done to the manual.

We'll work on this.

Best Regards,