PCB Alignment Tools come to EAGLE 8.1.1 Released Today!

[matt.berggren]

Hi All --

I'd wanted to send you all a quick note and let you know that EAGLE 8.1.1 was released just moments ago and includes some pretty awesome new capabilities to improve placement, routing / DRC, and more!

PCB Alignment

First, the big news!  PCB now includes a set of alignment tools useful for components, vias, pads, etc & which should make part placement and aligning those mounting holes, stitching vias, etc. super easy!  (Did we mention that we build stuff too? 😉  

The align command includes everything you'd expect including Align-Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Centers, and the all-important distribute horizontally / distribute vertically; which will make any placement process MUCH cleaner.  No more going crazy trying to count grid points or using that giant cursor at a zoom level which may not capture everything you'd hope to align.  (Pro Tip:  If you're like me, it's also super sweet when fanning things out and trying to get those vias juuuuuussssttt right.  (I'm very picky)  If you use this in combination with the route command to ripup redundant connections, it will maintain the routes and you can clean up any weirdness super quickly!)

--

DRC for unrouted airwires...Finally!  

Ok, this next one was just "table-stakes" and though it's not exactly a "hot" feature, it was totally overdue and critical!  DRC will now automatically detect unrouted airwires (!).  When you run the DRC, we'd also organized the unrouted nets into their own category making finding the airwires super easy and not clutter up the DRC output when you have a half-routed design!

A Few Little Library Improvements

A few new things in the Table of Contents view in the Library editor including an Add Symbol..., Add Package... & Add Device... button at the bottom and also, when you highlight either the symbol, package or device, the corresponding items will also be highlighted (!).  A sweet couple of time savers that will make life better, we hope!

--

There's a full set of release notes in the install and a number of very important additions / bug fixes not mentioned here.  We will continue to build on these foundations to make EAGLE the best tool we possibly can!  In the meantime, please keep the feedback coming and share your suggestions with us so they can get onto the roadmap and into the software!  There's some BIG stuff on the horizon but we are always looking for what will make you most productive.  

Happy Monday!

Best regards,

Matt - Autodesk. 

[Anonymous]

I have a couple of questions concerning the air wires in the DRC. Does this show/highlight areas on layout where this occurs? Is there a way to disable this? I understand why some may want this, but to me I'm not really willing to upgrade until I know for sure I can disable features I don't like. This seems like something I won't really like.

Please consider the fact that a lot of users have already been alienated to the point of not even using EAGLE since Autodesk bought it (sorry, subscriptions are complete and total BS). If you guys are adding features that you consider desirable, please ensure there's a way to remove them if they are unwanted.

I mention this because I still absolutely hate how the routing feature works, and I find that it makes using the routing tool rather difficult. Unfortunately, the object avoidance makes it difficult to not have Eagle 8.1 otherwise I would have stuck with Eagle 7 and below.

[edwin.robledo]

Hi adrewery,

Thank you for your participation on the forum, comments and suggestions are always appreciated.  The remaining airwires are noticed by the DRC check but it can not be disabled but they can be approved.  The detection of airwires does not place or add marking to the design since this not being flagged as an error or a warning, it just letting you know you have some non routed signal and it shows you where they are.  This feature has been requested for a very long time by thousands of users, and as part of the support team we had multiple techniques to detect them that would take a long time and having to change multiple settings. This new check will certainly improve the engineers design concerns with heavily congested circuit boards.

Best Regards,

Ed

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thanks for participating and I hope you're having a great day. Just to add to Ed's comment, if you notice the Airwires are treated as their own class in the DRC, so you can collapse the airwires tree and not show any of the airwire comments. As Ed showed, you can now find the airwires easily using this, so I'm sure many will find it helpful.

I know the routing tool is different now, but once you get used to it, you'll probably find that you like it better. If you would like PM and we can discuss the differences and the reasonings behind them. I think that will help clear any confusion you may have.

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

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

[RitchieParis]

Hi and bravo for this news and update.

Is there is chance to see in the futur update a mutiple PCB with one schematics ? it would be so useful and practical...PLEASE !!!

But don't worry I still like so much this App.

Thanks 

PS: And please Improve the LOGOS importation.

Ritchie

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi Ritchie,

Thank you for your kind comments. It's already possible to to make multiple versions of a PCB using only one schematic. This is implemented using Assembly variants. In EAGLE look at the help page for the Variant command for more information.

Definitely agree that the image importation can be improved and this is something we have on the roadmap.

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

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

@edwin.robledoand @jorge_garcia2 thank you for the reply. I understand it probably had been requested. I looked around a bit and could not find anything that clearly showed how it would look, but only that it was an addition to the DRC. It's good to know that it did not work the way I had worried.

I still would prefer to not have them show there at all, but I also understand that it takes quite a bit of code for such a seemingly simple task. It doesn't really inhibit my usage of the program, so I suppose I will just have to learn to live with it. I do think things like the routing engine should be configurable in this manner but that is a topic for another post.

I would like to suggest that this sort of feature be accompanied by a video briefly describing how it works. This would go a long way in preventing frantic posts such as my original one in this thread. That being said, the documentation and help has vastly improved since the purchase, so keep up the good work.

Regards,

Adam

[aholtzma]

FYI you forgot to document the 'align' command in help.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi aholtzma,

Thank you for reporting that oversight. It will be corrected shortly.

Let us know if there's anything else we can do for you.

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

After selecting a group, the most often required "align to grid" should be part of the right click menu, grid misalignment happens because of the constant switching from mm to inch grids.

[m3atwad]

Does the alignment tool work with the silk screen reference designators?  I can't seem to get them to aligh, only the footprints.

I can get the alignment tool to work with footprints so I feel like I'm missing something.  This is far to obvious to be overlooked when implementing a feature like this.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi @m3atwad,

I hope you're doing well. Our next release of EAGLE will have something to address this concern. Stay tuned.

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

Best Regards,