Allow placing components outside the board area

[samykamkar]

Sometimes I have a ton of parts and I want them to be near the board (left of the board origin). Unfortunately if I try to move any part left of the board origin, I get "Some objects extend outside the allowed board area." Well, I just want them there temporarily so I can more quickly access them and place them instead of zooming out a bunch, grabbing a single part, zooming in on the board, placing it, then repeating the process for every single part. If I could at least place them "outside the allowed board area", I could place them to the left of the board area and more quickly grab and place them.

Additionally, it would be better if Eagle didn't place every single component "below" each other in the board layout. When adding a bunch of components, it would be cool if Eagle laid the components out next to each other until some width, and then uses a new row. Kind of like text on a page, rather than a single word per line...Eagle seems to place components down on the board layout like a haiku.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Agreed.   While the area to the left and below the 0,0 origin marker  are outside the board area,  you should be able to at least organize your parts there,  with the stipulation that if you are not on professional, the CAM processor will only render what is above and to the right of the 0,0 origin marker,  and ditto for auto-routing. 

[samykamkar]

Why is this marked as solved? Someone else is simply agreeing with the suggestion -- the suggestion is still an open request.

[edwin.robledo]

Hi SamyKamkar,

Thanks for your participation on the forum, greatly appreciate taking the time to post your ideas and suggestions.  EAGLE should be allowing you to move one component at a time from the left side of the design into the board editor the first time you create your board from a schematic.  Components need to be moved into the positive quadrant and fit within the designated area according to your license.  Any placement outside the designated area will give you an error. 

You are requesting that EAGLE:

1-capacity to temporary move your components outside the designated board area as you get organized with your design.

or

2- Improved component placement when a new board is generated from a schematic. 

I will bring this up with the dev team, if we get enough request, it will certainly be added to the road-map.

Best Regards,

Ed

[samykamkar]

Hi Ed!

Thanks for checking out my suggestions!

I'm actually suggesting both -- #2 being an improvement in component placement when a board is generated and also #1 being the capacity to move components outside the designated board area, exclusively for component management purposes.

I'm happy to split this into two topics if you'd like. Also, although #2 may solve #1 for some people, I don't think #2 will ever be perfect and really depends on the board dimensions (in many cases it will be easier to pick components from the left, sometimes from the bottom, sometimes from the top, etc, depending on what part of a board you're working on.

I also understand there are board dimension limitations in general and I of course don't want those to be exploited, so I like @Anonymous's suggestion of CAM processor/autorouter not working with components outside of that area (I don't care if that's in place, I just understand the need to implement some restrictions so that versions aren't abused). My goal is simply to access components faster and currently it's a lot of zooming in and out.

Thanks!

[pmoulder78]

I think that is a great idea,  I hate having to continually shuffle components around within the board area once they are placed.  allowing users to place outside the board area would make it much more user friendly.  Surely a prompt / warning can written in if components have not been placed within the board area somewhere in the process, perhaps during DRC??

Also what are the chances of having the max area on the free version upped to 10x10???  10x8 is rubbish, most pcb manufacturers offer 10x10 boards as standard, there's a lot of people out there wasting money and time at the expense of those extra few cm2.

[RBeaubien]

Although I agree with the request to be able to put components outside the board area, I disagree with making to the left or below 0,0.  Most of my boards, 0,0 is center of the board so this would not work for me.

[dougR6AS9]

---

@samykamkar wrote:

Sometimes I have a ton of parts and I want them to be near the board (left of the board origin). Unfortunately if I try to move any part left of the board origin, I get "Some objects extend outside the allowed board area." Well, I just want them there temporarily so I can more quickly access them and place them instead of zooming out a bunch, grabbing a single part, zooming in on the board, placing it, then repeating the process for every single part. If I could at least place them "outside the allowed board area", I could place them to the left of the board area and more quickly grab and place them.

Additionally, it would be better if Eagle didn't place every single component "below" each other in the board layout. When adding a bunch of components, it would be cool if Eagle laid the components out next to each other until some width, and then uses a new row. Kind of like text on a page, rather than a single word per line...Eagle seems to place components down on the board layout like a haiku.

Thanks!

---

If I understand you correctly, I wrote a couple scripts to do this very thing.  Check out https://www.element14.com/community/thread/31802/l/two-scripts-to-help-layout-a-board-from-a-multi-p...

Yes, those scripts only work with the full version of EAGLE, *but* you can accomplish the same thing outside of the EAGLE program.  I use a Python script to modify the XML for the same result as those two ULPs.  I run the python script first, then open up the file in EAGLE and place the parts.  Since the script sets the locations inside the file independently of EAGLE, there is no limit to where I can place the parts.

[pmoulder78]

So i have this design which runs close to the maximum allowable board area.  I'm not happy with some of the placement, but since everything has been placed once i now cannot move components off the board so that i may re-arrange them in a more appropriate place without the stupid "outside board area" error.

The solution???   Start again from scratch?????  I don't know.  I've already spent hours getting this far and i'm now faced with the idea of having to scrap it and start again, all because i cannot utilise the area outside of the max area to facilitate laying out the board.  Kinda stupid isn't it??

I appreciate why the warning is useful, but it really means that you have to get your component placement right first time...unhelpful!!

[Anonymous]

Improved component placement, such as aggregation would be nice, no need to have a 10x10 milimeter space around a 1x2mm component...

Or, currently eagle DOES NOT check where to place components! It does so only very rarely, so you move components out of the area and you know what happens? The new components get placed far, far away, as if all the empty space was full of components, why?

[Anonymous]

regarding request 1) shuffling space.
Perhaps, one could draw a vertical line in the new layer SHUFFLE_space
and to the LEFT of that area, you could place components that are connected with airwires at most, basically the sorting area where your move the necessary components around where you can shuffle them until you have your groups to place on the board.

I usually had an ultra-cluttered board, with many components overlapping each other until I could make a reasonable placement.

Currently I do not have this problem, because you can place a myriad of 0402 components and sort them on the real board space, but having the clutter area would be nice.

For example, you could include a function//script that would run on all components lain in the clutter area and try to arrange them, so that the sum of their airwires distance is the least possible.

Then you can take the group and place it on the board and route it.

New components could be auto-placed in the clutter area as well.

Then you press the "unclutter" button and it runs rearranging, until a reasonable solution is found (or several (5 or 6) alternatives.

A) Is my description clear?
B) what do you think about it?

[Anonymous]

I have to edit myself, Edwin!

The CLUTTER_SPACE should not be a line, but a rectangular, circular or a free shape organized area, so that you could define it in a shape and space of your desire.

Then we would need TWO and not one clutter areas! One of "source_CLUTTER_SPACE" and the second "target_CLUTTER_SPACE" into which the components from the source would try to be "best arranged".


I think this idea should be marked and discussed as the next best improvement.

It would allow you to place any components into an area (onboard, off board) to rearrange them (preperably for an onboard space)

The genius is that you could reorganize components into specific shapes of the space you had left or designed.

[Anonymous]

Do nt panic, I have rearranged worse and had many components overlapping each other until the very last minute.

[pmoulder78]

There's no panic, i'm just annoyed that this cannot be handled within the software in a better way. 

If there was an area to the left of the board (equal to the max board area perhaps) where things could be moved to to help placement then life would be a lot easier. It cant be hard to do. 

And surely it would be easy / better to apply an error message if components were outside of the board area when routing or using the cam processor.

[Anonymous]

Let's wait for Edwin, what he thinks about the left/right or source/target area separation.

Your idea is to make the source (scratchpad) area by default of the same size as the purchased board area. Interesting!

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi Everyone,

We are fully aware of the issues this limitation causes and we are planning to make some improvements in this area to make EAGLE more flexible. I'm adding this entire thread to an enhancement report on this very issue. Stay tuned.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you guys.

Best Regards,

[maximumiq]

I didn't read every single item in this post, but I have this problem too, and it has completely stopped me from continuing, and I dont know how to get back to something that I can continue with.

I edited my schematic, created a board, made the layout.

Then I realized that I needed to replace a single component for another. This was while making the BOM.

I went back to schematic, edited the component for another type with another layout style.

Went back to board, and now the new "component" has been placed outside the board and cannot be moved.

My schematic is saved, and even if I edit schematic back, the component is still placed outside the board and cannot be moved.

What do I do. Start over ??#?#?¤?¤

Regards Henrik

[alexA3RDM]

I agree with most users in this thread: this is an outdated means of enforcing licensing restrictions that very seriously gets in the way of productivity.

[rachaelATWH4]

---

@maximumiq wrote:

I didn't read every single item in this post, but I have this problem too, and it has completely stopped me from continuing, and I dont know how to get back to something that I can continue with.

I edited my schematic, created a board, made the layout.

Then I realized that I needed to replace a single component for another. This was while making the BOM.

I went back to schematic, edited the component for another type with another layout style.

Went back to board, and now the new "component" has been placed outside the board and cannot be moved.

My schematic is saved, and even if I edit schematic back, the component is still placed outside the board and cannot be moved.

What do I do. Start over ??#?#?¤?¤

Regards Henrik

---

Hi Henrik,

I'm not sure why this board restriction would cause you to not be able to move a single part which is now outside the board limits. This restriction has been around for years, if it was fundamentally flawed in this way it would have been fixed long ago. Are you sure it's not something like your tOrigins and bOrigins layers have got turned off so you aren't able to select the part?

Best Regards,

Rachael

[maximumiq]

Hi,
That might well be so. I'll look into this when I get home from work.
I'm still new to Eagle and this could be the very reason.
In Denmark we have the expression 'error 40', meaning 40 cm from the computer display, ie. The user. In imperial measure this would be error 16.
If this is the case, its fixable.
Thanks.