Looking for way to shorten part names on board with modules

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am using Eagle v. 7.7.0 which supports hierarchical modules. My design uses a module four times (prefix "SB"), placed at equal intervals along the board width, so my board has parts with names like "SB2:C33" that appear on the tNames layer.

I was wondering if there is a way to mask the module prefix. My board is pretty tightly packed and these long part names make it very difficult to position the name labels for the top silkscreen.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

doug

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hello Doug,

I hope you're doing well. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, we are aware of this limitation and at this point in time we don't have a better solution. The entire hierarchy implementation is going to be reworked so we should have improvements on this front once this work is done. I don't have an ETA for this functionality, but we are working feverishly to make EAGLE better every day so it will probably be here sooner than you think.

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

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

@jorge_garcia 
So this post is just a few days shy of 2 years old, and I'm facing the exact situation as OP with no clear solution available via HELP MODULE, the UI in general, or online. This leads me to believe that the official solution to this problem is to re-name hundreds of components by hand, or accept incredibly long names for each component. I've tried to change the name of each module to something simple, such as just numbers, but this wasn't propagated through previously placed components. So even a barely-acceptable hack such as that wouldn't work.

After 2 years of development, does Autodesk have an update with this issue?

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

If you think that renaming your prefixes to something simpler like numbers will solve your problem, then I suggest writing a ULP to automate it. I can help with that if you would like.

Thanks,

doug

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thanks for reaching out. There is still no change in this situation, there have been 2 years of development but it hasn't been in EAGLE's hierarchy implementation. I don't think renaming all of your components is a great solution either since getting rid of the prefix would likely require getting rid of hierarchical structure of your design.

The only option I can see being feasible is writing the names on the silkscreen on the board and even that isn't very desirable.

We currently don't have a good easy solution for this situation.

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

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Jorge,

Adding automatic annotations with standard names across a hierarchical design is definitely a must for us.  We were hoping to migrate from Altium to EAGLE in 2019 but without this critical feature I'm afraid we're stuck using Altium.

Hopefully you can incorporate it soon!

-Eric

[Anonymous]

The best solution I've found is to rename the module according to what prefix you want on the PCB, and then leave a comment on the module in your top-level diagram describing what it is.

Here's an example:

Then CAD can do what CAD is supposed to do: Take care of the little details. Nobody wants to manage a hundred different labels on the PCB that don't move when you move the component.

[m.hoelzle.acc]

Let me just stress the importance of this topic and bump up the thread.
The feature of modules for creating a hierarchical schematic is basically useless at this point.

Suggesting to make up custom component names and placing text on the silk next to the footprints is really not feasible for larger projects and can't seriously be a way of working with Eagle (it's not a Gerber editor).

Eagle is getting a lot of new features at the moment but I feel like making old stuff work properly should be a really important concern also. I also get that the way modules are designed right now it is not trivial to incorporate this feature. Never the less using modules is really frustrating right now and coming from Altium it really is one of the biggest drawbacks.

Please make it happen.

Thanks, Markus

[Anonymous]

What's really upsetting about this is that I started using a hierarchical design method because I came across some video by Autodesk where they talk about how wonderful it is. They continue to advertise a broken feature, and don't fix it. Now I'm really far down a design path with this hierarchical design, and I can't really back out of it. I absolutely hate it, even though I see how in theory it's a better design practice. Now, it randomly changed the naming convention for parts, which is going to make it really difficult for my assemblers to place parts as the names are going to be all over the place. 

@jorge_garcia can you at least ensure that people are informed to stay away from this broken feature? Like make a blog post, or take down old videos promoting it? It has cost me many man hours and headaches to work around the issues this implementation of hierarchical design has caused, and I would not have used it had I not been informed about its wonders by your company.

[Anonymous]

Hello, has there been any way to solve this issue? I'm currently working on a hierarchical design and I'm yet to found a solution for the same problem as the OP.

Thanks for your time,

Abel Aguilar

[simon.gapp]

Hi,

I stumbled across this thread and am facing the exact same issues. Is there a timeline when this feature will be properly integrated in a new EAGLE version?

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @simon.gapp ,

I hope you're doing well. The best approach for now is to it assign every module a prefix that way you get that instead of the full module name in the silkscreen.

Sorry I don't have an ETA right now.

Best Regards,

[mohammed.hossein]

Hello,

The modular design feautre has been really a trap! 
After finishing a schematic with multiple modules and hunderds of parts, it was a pain to find a way to shorten the long part names.
On the one hand, it's a nice feature und makes life easier to organize  a lot of components in corresponding modules. On the other hand, it's annoying to have long names on the board.

The suggested solution, to rename the modules with short names, would work but with some costs.
In the case that one wants to have descriptive names for the modules, it would only work with adding the module name using the text tool and palce the name near the module.

In some cases it may be desirable to have the module name as prefix for a better placement of components.
It would be nice to have both possiblities:
1. Part names with module name as prefix
2. Part names without prefix

Regards,
Mohammed

[Anonymous]

---

@mohammed.hossein wrote:

Hello,

The modular design feautre has been really a trap! 
After finishing a schematic with multiple modules and hunderds of parts, it was a pain to find a way to shorten the long part names.
On the one hand, it's a nice feature und makes life easier to organize  a lot of components in corresponding modules. On the other hand, it's annoying to have long names on the board.

The suggested solution, to rename the modules with short names, would work but with some costs.
In the case that one wants to have descriptive names for the modules, it would only work with adding the module name using the text tool and palce the name near the module.

In some cases it may be desirable to have the module name as prefix for a better placement of components.
It would be nice to have both possiblities:
1. Part names with module name as prefix
2. Part names without prefix

Regards,
Mohammed

---

Yes, it is a trap that is actively advertised by AutoDesk despite the fact that hierarchical design is utterly unusable in its current state, and impossible to back out of without hundreds of hours of manual work. @jorge_garcia I asked you over a year ago about taking down media promoting this broken feature, and despite acknowledging that this is broken, you haven't taken any action to keep your users from breaking their designs with your broken features. This is paid-for software! The degree of unprofessionalism that Eagle represents when compared to Altium is laughable.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous ,

I continue to acknowledge the issues with hierarchy. Any videos on the youtube channel on hierarchy are old, there hasn't been any new content on that feature for years. I don't control the youtube channel and again all I can do here is report it to the team in charge of the youtube channel. From the other threads I know you are feeling upset with your most recent design. Please reach out through DM and I'll do my best to help.

Best Regards,

[pavelFF3T9]

I think this feature is quite usable with some limitations. I was glad about it for my 128 channel analog board.
The minimum usable prefixes are . (dot) alternate is , (comma) or ' (apostrophe) which do not take too much space.
So only colon is the additional character taking one full space. Number of the block is necessary to distinguish between components anyway so it could not be count as additional character.
In the case of plenty of different blocks one letter prefix is also not terrible.
Big advantage is that components and traces has predictable names so ulp can place all componets from the blocks of the same type according to one hand-placed block on board and route all simple wire segments with multiple of fixed X,Y offset between blocks via ROUTE commands in automatically generated .scr file.
Of course perfect production grade ulp file covering all radiuses and polygons is much harder to write.

[deepak_elango]

Hello, has there been any progress on resolving this issue? I'm currently working on a hierarchical design and have encountered the same problem without finding a solution yet.

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @deepak_elango,

I hope you're doing well. This continues to behave the same way although work is being done to improve it.

I'll pass your comments along.

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

Best Regards,