Eagle board area

[pmoulder78]

What is the maximum board area in Eagle standard???  Is it 160cm2

Is this area dynamic??  I.e could I have a 10 x16cm board or an 8 x 20cm board???  or a 4 x 40cm board??

Thanks

Phil

[edwin.robledo · Accepted solution]

Hi Phil,

Greatly appreciate your participation on the forum.  You are correct, the standard edition board size limit of 160cm^2 is dynamic from the origin of the page into the positive quadrant. Please note this board size limitation is only for component placement, the actual board outline can be of any size. 

I hope this helps.

Best Regards,

Ed

Please 'accept as solution' if my reply resolves your issue.

[Thomas.Hemmick]

Hi

I have the Premium version and this one advertises an unlimited area.  I don't believe that this is really true.  I need to make two boards, each of which has a width of ~16 inches, but the two of them have dramatically different lengths.  The "short" one is a little over 4 feet in length and the "long" one is a little under 16 feet.  The short one does absolutely fine, but the long one says that "y" values of ~2400.00 millimeters are invalid values and the board won't load.  Can you tell me the actual practical limit?

Thanks, 

Tom

PS--The board has a VERY large number of repetitive elements (600 resistors) and I used an external program to write the .brd file.

[rachaelATWH4]

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@Thomas.Hemmick wrote:

Hi

I have the Premium version and this one advertises an unlimited area.  I don't believe that this is really true.  I need to make two boards, each of which has a width of ~16 inches, but the two of them have dramatically different lengths.  The "short" one is a little over 4 feet in length and the "long" one is a little under 16 feet.  The short one does absolutely fine, but the long one says that "y" values of ~2400.00 millimeters are invalid values and the board won't load.  Can you tell me the actual practical limit?

Thanks, 

Tom

PS--The board has a VERY large number of repetitive elements (600 resistors) and I used an external program to write the .brd file.

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Hi Thomas,

EAGLE 7 used to be advertised as having a maximum board area of 4m x 4m and I am sure EAGLE 8 is supposed to be the same so 2400mm shouldn't be an issue... I think this is one for Ed or Jorge to investigate as it sounds like something isn't quite right there. If you rotate your board through 90 degrees so the 2400mm length is in the horizontal rather than the vertical does it give the same error?

Best Regards,

Rachael 

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for participating. The actual maximum limit is 4meters by 4meters, which means that the 16 feet board is too long, because 4 meters is about 13 feet.

We've never run into a user that needs a board that long, nor can I think of any manufacturer that could make a single piece PCB 16 feet long.

I learned something new today.

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

Best Regards,

[Thomas.Hemmick]

http://www.allflexinc.com/blog/maxi-flex-simplifies-electronic-packaging/

AllFlex makes a product called maxiflex for which they have made outputs up to 40 feet long.  Mine is only 16 feet long.  It is used to make devices like this one:

Both the Cu and Al stripes are kapton flexible circuits.  Eagle is able to design the smaller one for me, but unfortunately chokes on the big one.  Is there any possibility that the size could be extended???

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi Thomas.Hemmick,

I hope you're doing well. That is cool, thanks for sharing the picture. For the time being I don't think we can extend the board limits in time for your project deadline.

What I would suggest is to make gerbers for an 8 foot board and then using a gerber editor or through the cooperation of your board house have them merge the two sets of gerbers together end to end to get the 16 feet you need.

I've done this in the past(with LEDs) and it works well, especially on a board made up of repetitive elements. You can actually stitch the two gerbers yourself if you want to using a tool like Viewmate.

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

Best Regards,

[pmoulder78]

I don't suppose there is any update on this?  I have the standard version and have a few boards which run close to the max area limit.  Getting  component placement right means shuffling things around with the board area.

Can the placement of components outside of the max area be handled by an error message when routing or generating gerbers, whilst allowing users to place components outside the max area for ease of use??

Also could a layer be added which shows the current max area outline??  Something non selectable that can be toggled on / off???

Thanks

Phil

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi Phil,

None that I can share just yet ;). However rest assured that work is being done in this area. As soon as this is into EAGLE, I'll post again.

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

Best Regards,