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Flip the board

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Message 1 of 20
jsantosrico
10729 Views, 19 Replies

Flip the board

Hi!

 

There is a feature that has been asked since a long time ago and that keeps resurfacing from time to time, and I've searched a bit and nobody has mentioned it in a while, so I was thinking that maybe it's a good time to ask again 😄

 

Is there any possibilities of adding the ability of flipping the board? Right now, when you have to work with the bottom layers, it gets a bit messy, specially if you have a constructed prototype and you want to check if everything is in order. Also, due to the way layers stack, if you want to check the bottom silkscreen, the tracks get on the way, and the only way to solve that is messing with transparency values. Of course, you can print a mirrored board and use that as a guide, but as Jeff Gough pointed in 2011 (https://www.element14.com/community/thread/11706/l/flip-view-button?displayFullThread=true) "it's 2011, I don't own a printer". Well, it's 2017, can we have a flip views, pretty please?

19 REPLIES 19
Message 2 of 20
jorge_garcia2
in reply to: jsantosrico

Hi Jsantosrico,

I hope you're having a good day. I have added your comments to the existing enhancement report about this feature.

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

Best Regards,


Jorge Garcia
​Product Support Specialist for Fusion 360 and EAGLE

Kudos are much appreciated if the information I have shared is helpful to you and/or others.

Did this resolve your issue? Please accept it "As a Solution" so others may benefit from it.
Message 3 of 20
C.Nicks
in reply to: jsantosrico

Hi jsantosrico,

I agree that there should be a flip option, but there is a little know trick that may help. You can change the rendering order of the layers so the bottom layers render on top of the top layers.
Check out the SET Option.LayerSequence in the help file. You can specify the rendered layer sequence. If you want to flip the primary layers rendering order, type SET Option.LayerSequence then the order you want rendered.

 

Here is the rendering order I like best for flipping top and bottom along with supporting layers. You can load these settings from .scr files to make your own presets.

SET Option.LayerSequence 48t 49t 19t 20t 46t 24 28 26 126 52 22 44t 45t 38 36 32 30 34 40 42 43t 18t 17t 16-1 17b 18b 43b 41 39 33 29 31 35 37 45b 44b 21 51 25 125 27 23 47t 46b 20b 47b 19b 49b 48b 61-99

 

To set it back to default use SET Option.LayerSequence *

 

You can assign those commands or scr files for fast shortcuts. Alternatively you can create a custom toolbar button by placing the following into your eagle.scr file under the BRD: section.

 

MENU
'RENDER {\
                Top       : SET Option.LayerSequence *; |\
                Bottom : SET Option.LayerSequence 48t 49t 19t 20t 46t 24 28 26 126 52 22 44t 45t 38 36 32 30 34 40 42 43t 18t 17t 16-1 17b 18b 43b 41 39 33 29 31 35 37 45b 44b 21 51 25 125 27 23 47t 46b 20b 47b 19b 49b 48b 61-99; |\
        }'\

 

If you want to have your render settings in a scr files, you can change it to:

Rename the attached files from .txt to .scr and place them in your scripts directory. Then you can adjust the settings to your liking.

 

MENU
'RENDER {\
                Top       : SCRIPT RenderT.scr; |\
                Bottom : SCRIPT RenderB.scr; |\
        }'\

 

This creates Render Menu.png

 

 

 

Best Regards,
Cameron


Eagle Library Resources


Kudos are much appreciated if the information I have shared is helpful to you and/or others.
Did this resolve your issue? Please accept it "As a Solution" so others may benefit from it.

Message 4 of 20
jsantosrico
in reply to: C.Nicks

Very cool trick, indeed! It doesn't "flip" the board, but yeah, very cool. Thanks for sharing the screencast!

Message 5 of 20
C.Nicks
in reply to: jsantosrico

FYI there is also the option to use 'mirror-board.ulp'

It mirrors everything and also swaps the layer colors. I haven't really used it, but it seems pretty stable. Use it at your own risk though as it does actually move all elements and not just the display.

Best Regards,
Cameron


Eagle Library Resources


Kudos are much appreciated if the information I have shared is helpful to you and/or others.
Did this resolve your issue? Please accept it "As a Solution" so others may benefit from it.

Message 6 of 20
C.Nicks
in reply to: C.Nicks

I've made some modifications to the mirror-board.ulp to include the option to turn off layer color swapping. I also added additional layer support.

If you want the layer colors to be mirrored as well, so bottom blue stays blue when mirrored to the top etc, set recolor to 1.

 

No color changes: int recolor = 0;

Colors mirrored:    int recolor = 1;

Download the attached txt file, place it in your ulp directory, and rename it to mirror-board.ulp
Please let me know what you think.

Best Regards,
Cameron


Eagle Library Resources


Kudos are much appreciated if the information I have shared is helpful to you and/or others.
Did this resolve your issue? Please accept it "As a Solution" so others may benefit from it.

Message 7 of 20
jsantosrico
in reply to: C.Nicks

Yes, I've heard of it, but it's a hack, and developing the real deal
shouldn't be a problem. It's a standard feature in other packages that's
been requested in eagle for years, so I thought that now that they are
under new management, it was a good moment to ask.
Message 8 of 20
nnovotney
in reply to: jsantosrico

I think many have been asking for this for years, but there is always some excuse about when it will be in place.  Surely AutoCAD knows how to rotate a board view 180 about an axis.   Or maybe not.

Message 9 of 20
brouhaha0
in reply to: C.Nicks

Thanks, that is helpful!

 

However, Autodesk should implement this feature natively, as a viewing option that doesn't affect the design database at all.

 

Message 10 of 20
Fox_Alex
in reply to: brouhaha0

+1. Flip view will be very useful. On big complicated boards script working hard and slow, I`m always afraid that my design will be broken and I have to make backups before it. And I can`t use "Lock" feature if I need to flip the board.

Message 11 of 20

+1. Please add a command to be able to flip the board view. No ULP, no hacks, just a simple button that's all.

Message 12 of 20

Yes please, for the love of all that is copper and silicon, please add a flip view feature. I've added a "Kudos" to the original post. Hopefully more people will so that this gets the love it needs.

Message 13 of 20

FYI: this feature landed in the EAGLE 8.4.0 natively!

 

Use View -> Flip board

 

\o/

Message 14 of 20

I literally jumped out of my chair when I read the release notes 😄

Message 15 of 20

Yeah, I have immediately went to the fridge to open up a beer for celebration when I was reading about the flip board feature.

Message 16 of 20
rada.mar
in reply to: jsantosrico

Hi, the new feature is amazing! thanks.

I was wondering if it make sense when you flip the board it would also change the working Layer? I know that it can be a problem if you're in the middle of a routing, but otherwise it would be nice to change the working layer so if you start routing you're already on the bottom or top layer according to the window flipped stated. What do you think?

 

Message 17 of 20
matt.berggren
in reply to: rada.mar

Thanks for your post! Interesting suggestion! So when you flip in-process (eg when routing) the current layer would also flip? So for example a via would be dropped and you’d be on the bottom side? Or if placing a part, it would flip to the bottom for placement? Just want to be clear what the thinking is on your end. I would have to play with that model a bit to know if the mental gymnastics of suddenly moving left, then moving right wouldn’t do my head in! :).

I can see the usefulness though so don’t think I’m saying “no”. Though we may need to mock it up a bit and decide if it should be an option in the Options menu.

Best regards,

Matt - Autodesk
Message 18 of 20
rada.mar
in reply to: matt.berggren

Hi Matt,

 

First thought was about a simple flip and automatic change to the current layer, so if I start routing I would not need to change the layer.

The second idea also sounds great, the flip in-process during routing would drop a via to the current working layer. Similar to what already happen when you're routing and change the layer. I think both cases would save a bit of time and make the routing and flipping very fluid. 

 

Another point that would help with the disorientation after the flipping, maybe keep the board centred on the mouse point where the flipping process has started, right now it flips in relation the the board origin.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

Message 19 of 20
jorge_garcia2
in reply to: rada.mar

Hi @rada.mar,

You can already achieve what you are asking for by using Single layer mode while routing and then flipping while you route. It's two steps instead of one but it's a solution while we work on this.

Thanks again for your comments.

Best Regards,


Jorge Garcia
​Product Support Specialist for Fusion 360 and EAGLE

Kudos are much appreciated if the information I have shared is helpful to you and/or others.

Did this resolve your issue? Please accept it "As a Solution" so others may benefit from it.
Message 20 of 20

While it is great to see Eagle enter modern features such as flip board, it is too bad that the old 7.6.0 (pre-Autodesk) doesn't have that feature. I'll try for one of the prior tricks, although much less than ideal.

My corp day job has had me using Altium for 2 years, so now that I am back to doing side projects at home with Ealge, it has opened my eyes to just how different these platforms are. Sometimes quite a bit.

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