Bugs and performance issues found in 9.6.2

[scottH36AU]

I've just rebuilt my work PC, and reinstalled Eagle, so moved from 9.4.x to 9.6.2. Here's what I've found so far:

This PC spec is i7 11700KF, 64GB DDR4, high end "gaming" motherboard, 1TB M.2 boot disk, 4TB SSD striped RAID, dual GTX1080Ti GPUs on a 5 monitor setup (2 x 4k, 3 x 1920x1200), for reference.

• This version is SIGNIFICANTLY slower than 9.4 - zooming and scrolling around the board layout is clunky with a low frame rate. Switching to only vector fonts makes it slightly more responsive, but still nowhere near the speed of the previous version used on this machine.
• Response to command-line entries is slow. For example, I have macros for oft-used commands like "ratsnest" and "ripup @;" bound to macro keys on my keyboard. In 9.4.x these executed instantly. In 9.6.2 there is a very obvious lag between input and execution. Maybe 1 second or so for these 2 commands. I'm not sure if the devs have released a debug build or what, to cause such a difference?
• In both the schematic editor and board layout, the main view "glitches" at times, as the side bar changes size, which can be very annoying when trying to click on a trace etc, as the layout shifts left/right.
• In the sheets sidebar in the schematic editor, the text under each sheet is in yellow - so almost unreadable unless the background is set to black in the options.
• Still the problem of the "high DPI settings" are enabled. The text in the schematic editor is virtually unreadable when zoomed out where it should be ligible. The only "fix" for this is to completely disable high DPI settings both in Eagle, and also disabling it in the performance settings for the app, within Windows. I first reported this around 2 years ago I believe, and posted screenshots.

For me, the first 2 issues alone make it impossible to be productive with the current version, so I'll be reverting to 9.4.x .  As said, this is on a reasonably fast PC, which has just had a new install of Windows 10, and Eagle etc on new drives, and doesn't seem to have any issues with other apps currently.

(Edit: update - just reinstalled 9.4.2 and it's blazingly fast in comparison, which is just to confirm it's not a hardware issue.)

Thanks,

Scott

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @scottH36AU ,

I hope you're doing well. If you disable the detect board shape and live DRC functionality you'll probably see the speed revert back or very close to what you are used to in 9.4.2. 

You can find detect Board shape under Options > User Interface.

Live DRC will be under Options > Set.

Let me know if that helps.

Best Regards,

[C.Nicks]

Running SCR files that manipulate the board (teardrop, drill legend, etc) are also super slow. They made internal changes to the way commands are handled and slowed them down about 20x.

Sad this is the version we're going to be stuck with for the foreseeable future.

[scottH36AU]

I reinstalled 9.6.2 in parallel with 9.4.2 to test the settings changes you mentioned, and it made absolutely no difference to the performance of 9.6.2. The difference in performance is so vast that I suspect the devs must have released a debug build by mistake. Moving a major component in my design is smooth in 9.4.2 - i.e. the component follows the mouse exactly. Trying the same, with the same design in 9.6.2 results in the component jerking along at around 1hz. The command-line interface is also still slow, with at least 1-second pauses after entering commands, before anything updates. 

The reason I like using Eagle is the responsive UI - if the UI had been as sluggish as 9.6.2 when I first started out I don't think I'd be using it today.

[scottH36AU]

Yes, I guess it's good that there are no forced upgrades really. I'm not sure what 9.6.2 adds to what's available in 9.4.2. I can't think of anything obvious I need though (maybe auto-loading missing libraries!) I guess we'll have to see if they issue a fix, as I can't believe it's intentional.

[dietmar_schwertberger]

What ist the situation on this?

9.5.2 and 9.6.2 are still painfully slow and completely fail on larger files.

I have turned off the mentioned options.

Currently I'm combining several small designs into a panel. Each file takes 5 minutes to integrate and the final file (around 14MB) can be saved, but does not load at all. Eagle just is hanging and eating up CPU power.

With Eagle 7.x all these actions only took fractions of a second, including program start!

Working with multiple designs at a time has always been a a pain with Eagle 9.x.

[dennise43]

Can't add Arduino.lbr  to library.

Tried everything!

[manuel.yguelHRZX5]

Hi,
We have seen huge performance issues on the 9.6.2 this year. We want to say that we are very disappointed.
2 people in our team spend half a day trying to find what was the problem (we re-installed PCs, tried new graphic drivers and experienced the whole kind of disasters that almost always result from such experiments).

At the end we reached this post (thank you a lot by the way), to find that the issues came from eagle 9.6.2.

I think that such problems really need advertising to the eagle users, it would have saved a lot of money to our team.
Is there public benchmarks shared by the eagle dev team when a new version is released ?
It could be interesting to let users try some reference projects on their machine to create a data base of performance results.

[erik.kinstler]

Hey,

Thanks for this post, I have been troubleshooting this off and on for a few days now.

[kris.chlapek]

is there any resolution to this? i don`t belelive you bought Eagle just kill it!

[scottH36AU]

I suspect it's exactly why Autodesk bought Eagle. It's pretty common for companies to buy out their competition to then let that product die to force users across to their own product (Fusion for PCB design or whatever it's called). I remember way back when Adobe bought Macromedia to do the same thing. Obviously, KiCAD is a good alternative now - personally I've resigned myself to Eagle being frozen on version 9.4.2 forever now, and continue to use it as I have so many cloud assets and also use Fuson360 for CAD. Basically there have been no improvements or significant bug fixes in almost 4 years - if anything, every version since 9.4.2 has (probably deliberately) been worse and worse.

If you're starting off in PCB design and have no legacy ties, then obviously it's a VERY bad idea to use Eagle now.

[kris.chlapek]

Yeah, but the intergration in F360 is something i like, but usually the eagle worked a lot better than the version embeded in 360, this is why I always used it that way.

Anyway, might be time for a change.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @kris.chlapek,

So it's good to clarify at this point what the intent of acquiring EAGLE was. The goal was not to kill EAGLE, but to take it's codebase and incorporate it into Fusion in order for Fusion to become an end to end consumer product design platform. For those of you who have used Fusion for some time you know that it has lots of tools for machining, simulation, rendering, etc. The goal is for a team of designers to be able to all work under "one roof", which eliminates inefficiencies in data translation and process workflows to allow designs to get to market faster.

This level of integration is something that hasn't been done before so there are going to be growing pains. To @kris.chlapek 's point we are continuing to work to improve the performance of Fusion Electronics to match and exceed EAGLE. Our next release is going to have a noticeable improvement especially in graphics performance. We'll get there and when we do it will be because of the legacy of EAGLE, the work of the devs that originally created it and those that have continue to carry the torch bringing the code in Fusion 360.

[scottH36AU]

There are four main issues for me with the Fusion version of the PCB design tool based on a quick look:

1. Performance is not as fast as Eagle 9.4.2 - it feels more like EasyEDA's web-based tool - I'm assuming the same commands will all work, but haven't tested extensively.
2. I didn't see any way to run custom ULPs - I have several that I use to produce BOM and centroid files in the correct format for manufacturers to use for PCBA. The Fusion tool only has one output, so it would involve either me writing some code or a script to convert that to something suitable. With Eagle it's a button press.
3. Cloud-only storage (presumably on US servers). Some clients do not want their IP moved outside of the country, and also tend to want access to the files via something like Git or another tool. There seems no way to specify the territory storing the data (which we do with other files using Amazon).
4. Admittedly I only took a quick look, but there seems no way to find or edit my custom libraries of parts with models etc that I have created over the years with Eagle. Obviously they're somewhere in the same cloud - but there is no equivalent of the part management or library editor.

On the plus side the inclusion of a simulation tool looks nice - Eagle never had good integration, and it's a pain to set up meaning outside tools have always been my choice.

[kris.chlapek]

Please be so kind and let me know when this great improvement is going to implemented?

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @scottH36AU,

Thanks for the detailed response and how you have organized it. I'll address the points in order.

1. This is something we are constantly working on and like I said the next release is going to have improvements in the graphics arena. This release should be out within the next month or so @kris.chlapek . Some areas have actually been improved to be faster than EAGLE (script operations and ULP performance for example). This is something we are continually working and great strides are being made.

2. The ULP command is under the Automation section of the top toolbar in all of the Electronics editors.

3. The cloud is non-negotiable when it comes to Fusion(believe me I've tried but gave up on that fight a long time ago). With that said, the idea to use alternative cloud infrastructures has been thrown around and there is pressure to give other options but for now, nothing has materialized on that front. For now, I would just assume that the current cloud infrastructure in Fusion 360 will be the only option for some time.

4. Libraries can be stored in the Fusion Data Panel like any other file and Fusion Electronics has a full fledged library editor. You can access it by going File > New Electronics Library from any of the editors.

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

Best Regards,

[scottH36AU]

Hi Jorge,

Thanks for the response, good to hear that you are improving the overall performance of the software. For point 4, are current Eagle "managed libraries" available to use now? If so I might take some time to test porting a design over so that I can conduct a better performance comparison.

Thanks,

Scott

[HelenChen-AutodeskQA · Accepted solution]

Hi @scottH36AU ,

In Fusion Electronics, you could use the managed libraries in the Library manager too.

Hope it helps.

Best regards,

Helen