Please add 'change radius' feature to circles

[Anonymous]

Eagle still needs a quick change radius command for circles

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous,

I hope you're doing well. Could you provide some more details as to how such a command would be? Changing the radius in EAGLE can be done easily using the info.

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

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

As in, if one wants to use the 'change' command, several properties appear such as line width, layer, etc. And then you can quickly click on an item or apply the change to a group of items for a rapid editing. Such a feature is not available for circle radius, therefore making the rapid change of circular pad arrays tedious.

[one-of-the-robs]

When you say "circular pad arrays", what do you mean? An array of circular pads? Or a number of pads arranged in a circle? Or what? Because neither of the first two would be helped in any way by being able to change the radius of a circle object, since neither actually involves one.

In the former case, you'd want to change the drill and/or restring of the pads.

In the latter, you would need to MOVE all the pads (independently, unfortunately). I'm sure this could be done algorithmically, given the assumption that you know that you are dealing with such a ring, and knowledge of the centre. Possibly, I could envisage a "ratiometrically move all items in the current group towards / away from a defined centre point" operation, although I'd certainly place that in the "maybe useful ULP" category rather than something that should be built in.

[Anonymous]

I mean in the latter case in which many circular pads are involved like for
BGA pads. In this case, I am referring to pads made with the circle tool
(line width = 0), not the pad tool.

It would make sense to be able to type 'change radius' into the command
bar, select the radius, and quickly click on the circles to change it,
rather than individually using the INFO tool and re-typing the radius for
every single circle.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous,

I hope you're doing well. You shouldn't be making pads with circles, these don't contain proper netlist connectivity and will give you a lot of problems down the road. Use the SMD command, set roundness to 100% and set the x and y dimensions of the pad to be the same this will get you circular BGA pads.

This is what the Package generator does. If you need a code example check out the make-device-symbol-package-bsdl.ulp that comes with EAGLE.

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

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

I understand, but in cases where I want to make floating pads without the
necessity to go through making a part, using the CIRCLE tool is
advantageous and has been working well for me. I also need it for making
stopmask circles that are smaller than the size of the pad, as EAGLE
doesn't allow that. The change radius feature would be helpful for that too.

[charlie_didear]

Jorge,

I hope you are doing well.  I would like to suggest a use where 'change radius' command working on circles would be beneficial.  If you have a BGA where you want to set the exact stencil opening size in the tCream layer to be different from the default size given by an SMD pad, then you need to turn off the "Paste" option for all SMDs.

Then, you need to create circles in the tCream layer to custom-define the size of the stencil opening diameter for a BGA pad (for example, if the manufacturer of that BGA recommends a specific stencil opening size, which they often do).  The same may need to be done for the solder mask openings.

Currently the best way I can think of doing this would be to turn off the "Cream" and possibly "Stop" options for each pad (which is easy to do with the change command) and then creating circles in the tCream and tStop layers.  However, I came across an issue on an existing footprint where the circle radius in tCream and tStop layers was incorrect.  This is where a "change radius" command applied to a whole group of circles (however many there would be in a BGA package, likely hundreds of pads) would save a lot of time.

As of EAGLE 9.6.2, the only way I know of changing the radius would be to click each circle individually with the info command and then changing the radius there...very slow.  A marginally faster way of fixing this would be to delete all but 1 circle, then change the radius of that circle, then setting the appropriate grid to copy that circle over strategically.  You could save even more time if you got up to 5, 10, 32 circles (for example), and then copied that larger group and move them over.   This is still very sub-optimal in my opinion however.

Regards,

Charlie

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @charlie_didear ,

I hope you are well. There's a change Diameter command which you can apply to the whole group of circles which would accomplish what you are trying to do. It's the wrench icon in the modify menu.

I agree having to do that one at a time would be a nightmare, hence the Change Diameter command.

Let me know if you run into any problems.

Best Regards,

[charlie_didear]

Hi @jorge_garcia,

Thanks for getting back to me.  I have tried using the "change diameter" command on a circle, but nothing happened.  Just in case I was doing something wrong, I opened up EAGLE 9.6.2 and tried to use the command in different ways.  I have tried applying the command to a group of circles as well as to individual circles; neither worked. I also made sure the circles were selected properly and not locked by using the move command on the group.  Changing the width of the circles from 0 to something non-zero, does not work either (by the way, I want it to work with 0 width lines because it avoids mundane math).

I am primarily attempting this in the footprint editor which is where it should be the most useful, but to be thorough, I have also tried using "change diameter" on circles drawn in the board editor.  No difference.

Thanks,

Charlie

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @charlie_didear ,

I am sorry, I led you astray. The diameter parameter only applies to vias and pads not circles. That one is on me, I apologize for the lapse.

Best way to do this in the library, is to form a group containing all of the circles. Then in the library look in the inspector adjust the radius value and you'll see that they all get adjusted to the new value.

Again I'm really sorry for the confusion.

Best Regards,

[charlie_didear]

@jorge.garcia,

No worries! I tried the inspector method and it worked! Thanks for the
tip! I honestly have not used the inspector much (I'm too used to using
the info and change commands), so it did not occur to me to try using the
inspector. Knowing that it allows me to change the radius of a group of
circles will motivate me to explore that tool more.

Thanks,
Charlie