Is Eagle retired?

[CE3Electronics]

Hi,

I just had the most stressful conversation with sales.  I went to buy another Eagle Premium license and they said it was a discontinued product.

Is it true that Eagle has merged with Fusion to the point that the Eagle software will no longer be available?

Please help.

[Anonymous]

Hi matt.berggren , I believe ayorkR8GD6 is asking for Eagle to stay separate from Fusion360.
The combining of these two softwares has made it much worse on pcb layout side

[jeffg28CLY]

So it has now been a full year since the last update of Eagle. Still at v9.6.2.

Is that going to be "v9.6.2 Final," or will there be more updates? If so, when?

[RitchieFromParis]

No ! finish 😩 no more longer update.

Now this is Fusion 😩😩 with no update for a long time and many problems, and no communication from the Team...

What a sad situation...

is there is someone on the plane ? 

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @RitchieFromParis ,

I hope you're doing well. There's always some one on the plane 😁

I don't have an ETA for when a new EAGLE release might happen. As a team we are currently spread a little thin so outside of the main focus areas right now there is little else going on.

Whenever you want or need an update. Feel free to post and I'll tell you whatever I can find out or whatever is going on.

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

Best Regards,

[RitchieFromParis]

Hi Jorge and thanks for your reply, 

Really ? 😩 please communicate for all your customers, a little message would be the welcome for reassure all the community.

This is just my opinion...this is a marketing point

Best Jorge 

[RitchieFromParis]

I had this morning the most unpleasant meeting with my direction concerning Fusion, I could not finish a big project still because of library problems (see my last post of this morning) I think the decision definitive will be taken This month to move to Kikad or Diptrace for our 20 universities across the world.

I think I have been very patient and have always defended Eagle, but now when we open a project we have a BIG stress and we ask ourselves whether we can finish it, it's not possible to continue as it.

There were fewer problems with Eagle.

For your team there is no problem and everything is fine, it is undoubtedly all our team of teachers (more than 45 engineers) who did not know how to use your software.

I'm really sorry Jorge but the stress is too important when we open fusion, I'm really tired of seeing harass or telling me that's probably me who do not do things well.

I really enjoyed your help and patience during all these years.

Thank you for all Jorge.

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @RitchieFromParis ,

I understand the situation your in. We fully understand that this is the biggest issue with Fusion 360 Electronics right now and that it's not intuitive or easy to use. It's being worked on but it can't come soon enough. 

I do hope you'll revisit at some point once things have stabilized.

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

Best Regards,

[aholtzma]

Also, when will we see an M1 Mac build for Eagle? It has been a year since the Apple Silicon announcement.  

[RitchieFromParis]

Hi Jorge, 

I appreciate to read you that it's a know problem and I am not crazy, but again a simple communication to your clients will be very appreciate by the community, and my boss!!.

The only decision come from to my boss and students ! I like Eagle but it's very difficult to work effectively and quickly with.

Get big stress when I open FUSION is not really good for my headache, but I am sure you understand me.

If you don't have an estimate for how to fix these problems, my boss won't go your way, you know how bosses and business team think.

Best Jorge

[jeffg28CLY]

"We fully understand that this is the biggest issue with Fusion 360 Electronics right now and that it's not intuitive or easy to use. It's being worked on but it can't come soon enough."

I'm sure these things weren't your decision to make, but I hope you are relaying the community's utter disdain for how this is going...

For example, what you said there - "not intuitive or easy to use."

Why would they release a product like that? It's not intuitive, it's not easy to use, it's buggy... yeah let's release it!

Has there yet been any internal talk of having webinars or other online meetings with customers to go over progress with the next version of Eagle, or the future?

Autodesk's Inventor software: Regular (invitation-only) webinars or meetings on the progress of improvements and bugfixes, and solicitation of input from the userbase, and their beta-release and alpha-release channels.

Contrast that with Eagle: Nothing. Still at v9.6.2 for over a year. There's not even an "Eagle Ideas" forum section like there is for Inventor. There is only "Eagle Forum" for anything and everything.

Again, the lack of communication on progress or roadmaps for Eagle is a huge blow in confidence in the product line's future.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @jeffg28CLY ,

I hope you're having a great day. You've asked a good question and I'm going to answer it with the following quote:

"Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection" Mark Twain

If you wait to have everything perfect, you will likely never release anything especially with products as complex as CAD software. Additionally, you will never find all of the issues until the tool is out in the wild and people use it and provide feedback. My view of the library manager is naturally very biased because I work with it every day and I get so used to it's quirks that I begin to forget about them. The same can be said of developers and everyone on the team. If you build something you know it so intimately you lose sight of how someone without the background will approach it.

I think those two are main reasons things are released the way that they are. No one intentionally wants to release something hard to use. What make the library hard to use now, is that it requires a continuous awareness of what your library your design is referencing and whether that library is a managed, local, or fusion team library. It's a much larger mental load that it needs to be and if you ever get that mixed up there's a lot of potential for pain. If you work with it a lot that becomes second nature, but if you don't it will bite you.

The entire experience is being reworked to be more streamlined and conform more to how Fusion works. I've seen some mockups and we've done some user testing and the results are very promising but as always it can't come soon enough.

There are talks of doing more webinars and getting things more inline with how other Autodesk tools handle this, but again it's just a matter of time. Thank your for bringing this up, this is one of the larger threads on the eagle forum and management does keep an eye on it.

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

Best Regards,

[jakymiwm]

Stop wasting time on Fusion and get some work done on Eagle!

[jesper8W75R]

We would.
If it had been working!

[jakymiwm]

Sorry, I was referring to Autodesk

[engineering]

I understand that roadmap, conceptually, however, as a long time Eagle user, and very new Fusion user, I am concerned with forced cloud storage model of Fusion. Collaboration is not a key driving factor for my usage model. It is nice to have it available, but it is not primary or even secondary. Building out a project management concept that supports users that cannot (for various reasons) store some projects in cloud, should be a priority. Using the still (for now) Eagle standalone is acceptable... for now. Due to the forced cloud storage issue, I am only using Fusion mCAD app for practice. I am not in a position to do any real projects in a space that will have portions stored in a cloud. Therefore I am stuck with a nice suite of products that I can only use a portion of, and even that is clearly not going to be further developed vigorously and kept available long term.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @engineering ,

I hope you're doing well. This is a common concern and there are definitely situations where cloud storage is not an option. With that said, it isn't as common as some think. At this point in time only 5% of active EAGLE users have not pushed or done something in Fusion 360. This implies that on some level for 95% of our current user base cloud storage of their data is an option for them. 

We will continue to explore options but this is really a much larger issue than just electronics. Fusion 360 itself is fully built and committed to cloud data storage and other tools are following suite. So I would urge anyone with a similar concern to really analyze if cloud storage truly is a deal breaker for their work. If you regularly work with an Android or iPhone you are likely in a position where cloud storage isn't a deal breaker.

Thank you for your feedback.

Best Regards,

[tkornack]

Hopefully you're just trying to spin this in a positive way and you even acknowledge that there is a need, but if your metric is "pushed or done something in Fusion 360" then you might be grossly misinformed about the need. Many of us "did something" in Fusion 360 only to desperately start searching for alternatives once it became clear that there's no way to working on data with export controls or other legal data storage requirements.

We continue to post messages here in the hopes that Fusion will offer a way to be in compliance for these cases, but with a response like this, it sounds like it's simply not coming, and that most of us in this position will be forced to migrate away. 

Why not offer a way to store files locally? It can be a giant blob store if it has to be, not individual files that can get moved and become inconsistent. Fusion already offers offline mode, so it's obviously technically possible. 

Let's just take the rest of your writing point by point, which is significantly problematic and condescending:

"We will continue to explore options but this is really a much larger issue than just electronics."

No, actually, Autodesk specifically made it an electronics issue for everyone when they bought and then deprecated Eagle without a way to work on data locally. 

"Fusion 360 itself is fully built and committed to cloud data storage and other tools are following suite."

Indeed it is. Just because everyone else is doing it does not make it a good thing to do.

"So I would urge anyone with a similar concern to really analyze if cloud storage truly is a deal breaker for their work."

We did that already, and we came here to complain.

"If you regularly work with an Android or iPhone you are likely in a position where cloud storage isn't a deal breaker."

What? Nobody does CAD on their phone.

I can think of three responses that would be positive:

Best:

1. You're working on a more complete offline mode with local storage

Better:

2. You're working on supporting local servers. 

Good:

3. You're working on offering an ITAR-compliant cloud

[engineering]

Hi jorge.garcia,

You are conflating separate things: 95% of users may have had some instance when cloud storage was acceptable at least once, but that does not indicate that it was preferred or that it was acceptable for all of their projects. I do have some projects that cloud is acceptable. I even have occasional projects where it might be preferred. SO... I can see where I might fall into that category of the 95% that have pushed to Fusion 360 at least once, yet for me, it is not preferred 95% of the time, and totally unacceptable about 40% of the time. So for me, it is actually desirable about... 5% of the time.

As for my iPhone, no I do not use iCloud. I do however have a nice encrypted 24TB NAS at home, sitting behind a robust firewall.  Of course, when I make use of the VPN functionality, in a sense, I do use cloud services... that I own and control such that I can give assurances to my clients that their project data is secure.

Your 95% number simply represents the percent of users that found it at least minimally acceptable at least once. That is NOT impressive at all. That being said, of course there are major convenience and efficiency advantages with cloud storage.  Cloud storage even has some security advantages, depending on the security model being considered (loss of data being extremely unlikely, for example). However, the issue we are having is the difference between a feature and a mandate.

A few years ago, I considered subscribing to Onshape.  Once I showed a little interest, wow did they try selling me hard on their offering. At that time, Eagle was still independent.  The show stopper for me, was cloud only data storage. That was a non-starter. When I first signed up for Fusion 360, it was primarily to support updates to Eagle, which I have used for 11+ years. Secondarily, I was excited to see it being integrated with Fusion 360, to marry eCAD and mCAD together in a capable and VERY cost effective suite.  I was at that time, under the impression that Fusion 360 cloud storage was a feature that I could use selectively, which would suit my purposed perfectly. It turns out that I was incorrect.

I am sure that I am not the only one that has come to this place via a similar path with similar needs.

[jeffg28CLY]

"At this point in time only 5% of active EAGLE users have not pushed or done something in Fusion 360."

How much of that is active usage, versus once or twice?

I've "used" Fusion360 with Eagle to try to push out a STEP file of a board. Maybe once or twice, and it was not a smooth process.

Someone else I work with tried Fusion's integration of Eagle and didn't like it. But they did load Fusion and "use" the PCB design portion for awhile.

Does that kind of thing count toward the 95%?

It's been months since I fired up Fusion. Eagle gets used daily though.

The mandatory automatic updates with no rollback remains a huge problem. For example, I had one update hit that caused substantial lag in the 3d portion of the GUI. I'm talking like move-mouse --> wait 0.5 seconds --> cursor moves. Every time.

I had to wait until the next update came in to make it usable again.

But if, for example, we were to integrate Fusion with a manufacturing process (as we have done with Eagle via ULPs), and an update breaks some part of that integration, what then? We just go line-down and hope that a future update fixes the problem?

I'll also reiterate my "NO" vote for mandatory cloud storage/access.

Outages happen.
Company priorities change, sometimes unexpectedly.

Local server storage is what we use where I work, and that's it. And for some people, cloud storage simple will never be an option.

To this point, I've only used Fusion360 because a) It came with the software bundle I already have, b) I didn't have another good option.

(I'll also throw in, relevant to the thread's title: Autodesk's bid to try to buy Altium also makes me imagine that Autodesk isn't happy with their Eagle acquisition, and that they want something with more capabilities, or that Eagle's codebase is so old that it can't really be salvaged for modern requirements.
I've been told here and there that big things are coming, like a complete redesign of Eagle's graphics engine, and Python scripting. When? Will these in fact be Fusion-only things though? Is Eagle v9.6.2 actually "Eagle Final?")

[Timon-MESO]

I use Fusion 360 for MCAD regularly but Fusion Electronics is as of yet completely unusable with designs that have more than a handful of components, it slows down massively very quickly where in Eagle that only happens with more complex designs with lots of layers and imported bitmap graphic elements.

I try Fusion Electronics now and then but unless this promised new graphics engine comes along and the way that  we can use libraries in Fusion fundamentally changes I do not see how we can ever use Fusion Electronics for any professional work in this state.

As for cloud storage, while that works for MCAD this does not work with how the ECAD world operates right now.
We are heavily dependant on automation for post-processing designs which requires to have my files in filesystem without needing to go through an export process each time I save.

We also rely on GIT, something we never used for MCAD because it just isn't suitable.

So you are asking users to make enormous changes in their professional workflows for something that they likely already have through either GIT versioning or third party cloud storage providers without sacrificing their workflows.

All tooling in this space relies on local filesystem access, so really don't see how you can reasonably make Fusion Electronics in the exact same way that MCAD currently works, the whole library mess is just exaggerated by this.
Maybe think about a local twin copy feature that gets synced up so local filesystem access for files isn't completely broken?

I care less about the fact that files are in your cloud, while others do have the mentioned concerns with things like ITAR. For me and many colleagues in the field its a question of how do I get access to my files and the interface to your cloud that is only accessible via Fusion or the browser is just a deal breaker for existing workflows.
It's a matter of accessibility.

I use cloud storage daily, but its interface is the local filesystem which means no change whatsoever to workflows.

With MCAD there is some benefit to it and I only really ever have to export when I sent something to a factory and don't need automation tools to do further work on my files for documentation and other things. ECAD is more complex in that regard and unless you somehow can offer a replacement in your own ecosystem for the needs we have I don't see why I should switch to Fusion and sacrifice what we have, the benefit is just so negligible right now it just isn't worth it in any way.

I'm a big fan of the idea of converging ECAD with MCAD more tightly but if things continue at this rate I don't know if this makes sense for us in the long run, we need more professional features, we were hoping those would come given the grand plans you had with Eagle but the initial promising pace has come to a full stop, at least from a user perspective.