Polygon Change from 9.x to Fusion

[elias.santistevan]

I'm attempting to move from Eagle 9.x to Fusion but I'm having an issue related to a difference in the way Fusion renders polygons vs. Eagle 9 (or at least I think so). I'm using the Buzzard Label Generator,  which is a python library that takes plain text and converts it into an object to place into Eagle. Here is what the text object on layer 21 (silk) looked like previously (top) and now (bottom):

I contacted the developer of the tool and he seems to think its related to the way that Eagle rendered polygons previously by determining what to fill based on the "direction of the nested shapes". He suspects that Fusion has changed this behavior.

In comparing the same board file silk objects in their raw XML format, I can't conclude anything except that there are much more lines in the BRD file dealing with the individual silk object before I import it into Fusion then after.   Here is a "before-an-import" image:

And an "after-import" image:

Any insight into what has changed would be very helpful for me and to the developer of that tool. Is there by the off chance a workaround?

Thanks

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @elias.santistevan,

I hope this message finds you well. The polygon implementation in Fusion is VASTLY different under the hood to the original implementation in EAGLE.

In this case when EAGLE file gets converted to a Fusion file you loose the inside text of the label. The workaround is pretty simple. Recreate the labels in Fusion, if you remake them, the interior of the label will be preserved.

It's a one time effort so in the grand scheme of things not too much work. Let me know if this doesn't work for you.

Best Regards,

[elias.santistevan · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your response! Unfortunately re-adding these polygons does not fix the issue, here's a screen shot of the object in Fusion:

I think in the end the tool that I use will have to be updated, given that Fusion's approach to polygons is vastly different than Eagle classic, as you stated.

Thanks again!

[nick.poole]

Hi @jorge_garcia, I want to elaborate on this. 

Remaking the labels will not be a small effort. We have hundreds of these graphics across several products and before we can migrate to fusion we'll need to be able to reliably import our legacy designs without re-creating all of our label libraries. 

As @elias.santistevan aluded to, these graphics are currently tool-generated. I wrote the tool, so the work falls on me to update it so that it outputs Fusion-friendly polygons. I don't think this will be a huge lift, and I think it's ultimately good that we're leaving behind the polygon implementation in legacy-Eagle. 

That said, it doesn't solve the problem of importing our existing designs. It feels very much like the onus is on Autodesk to ensure that polygons render the same before and after being translated from a legacy file, and not on our electrical engineers who will need to re-generate the tags every time we migrate a project to the new software. I don't believe I was exploiting a bug in the renderer or creating invalid polygons, so I will be surprised to find out if this isn't a problem for other users who imported their graphics using other methods. 

My workload is the same either way, I just wanted to make it clear that as the product currently stands, we can't migrate hundreds of existing projects.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @nick.poole ,

It's nice to hear from you, I used to enjoy the videos you did for Sparkfun. It's been awhile.

This was a discussion I had with one of the devs responsible for the new polygon implementation, I don't remember all the details. The conclusion was that because of the way the polys are implemented in the library when a user brings in their EAGLE library there is a chance this will happen with voids within the polys. There were not any good technical solutions to make that import reliable across the two poly implementations. The decision was made that even though it will generate an effort for the user, it is a one time effort. Once in Fusion 360 they will never have to do it again.

If you have hundreds you likely don't have to update the hundreds at once. You can spread the effort over a longer period of time. I understand it's not ideal but I went through all of this with that dev and that was the determination. With that said, if the volume of these requests blows up then we will likely have to revisit that decision.

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

Best Regards,