Importing existing EAGLE designs into Fusion 360 Electronics

[Anonymous]

Firstly, I have to say I'm very impressed with what I've seen so far. As a long-time EAGLE (20+ years) and Fusion 360 user, seeing this come together in a unified way is awesome.

I have a large project that's about to start within the next few weeks. It will involve some new board designs as well as the reworking of about 20 existing board designs. In almost all cases, these boards will require front panels and will need to fit together into multi-board assemblies in some cases, so this seems like an ideal use for the new capabilities.

I had a play around today, but hit some issues. Though I was able to import existing boards, schematics and libraries, once in the Fusion world they were no longer linked together. Specifically, I had a design done just a week or so ago in EAGLE which had a completed schematic and a mostly complete board layout. After the import, the board and schematic were no longer linked.

As a second issue, the imported libraries were older (unmanaged) libraries, but I do have a need to generate accurate 3D views because this will be necessary for accurately designing front panels with appropriate holes and slots.

What's the best way forward here? As a side-note, I'm OK with redoing the board layouts because I'd intended doing that for design-for-manufacture purposes (and to correct some EMC issues left over from an older design). Do I need to replace the unmanaged libraries by making new ones? Advice appreciated!

One other question -- what's the likely longevity of the separate EAGLE software from the point of view of being able to maintain older designs? This is a separate question, but might be the same question if the answer is to stay with EAGLE.

[RichardHammerl · Accepted solution]

Hi,

thank you for your participation in our Fusion Electronics forum. Great to meet you here.

If you want to use schematic and board files from an EAGLE version, please create a "New Electronics Design" and then click the icons for "Reference to a schematic document" and then "Reference to a PCB document" (marked with the red arrows in the image). Select the files from your computer then.

If you want to use your previous libraries, simply go to File/Open and select the Library file you want to open (from your computer). Now you can edit the library and for example add packages. 

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

[Anonymous]

Thanks -- I missed that option. I'll do that.

[edwin.robledo · Accepted solution]

Hi Plodger,

Thank you for participating of the Fusion 360 Electronics forum. I just wanted to expand on Ric's reply that we have created a short video tutorial in this regards.

I hope it helps.

Best Regards,

Ed

[engineeringNCMXB]

I am a bit baffled why there is not a simple "IMPORT EAGLE PROJECT" where you pick either SCH or BRD file and it just opens up like native Eagle. Why all the steps for the user that are obscure enough to require a special video on how to open a project?

[AntonGabrie]

I have been using Eagle for quite a while and have several projects (schematic and board) along with the 3D model rendered by Fusion 360 thanks to the Eagle-Fusion integration. Now that Egle has been almost fully integrated into Fusion I created new electronic designs and linked existing board and schematic files for each of my eagle projects, and that works fine, but when I click view PCB in 3D, fusion creates a new model rather than using the one previously created. Is there no way to link them together? My concern is that many of my components don't have a 3D model assigned in the Eagle library, and were instead added in Fusion by using the edit PCB feature and adding the 3D model for those components. So when I use de new PCB features in Fusion, the board appears with no components, only flat black boxes. What would be the best thing to do here?

[RichardHammerl]

Hi @engineeringNCMXB 

I think there is nothing wrong with a video showing how to open a EAGLE board in Fusion Electronics. Even simple things can be explained easily with a video. There probably would also be a video, if we had an "Import" option...  

IMHO the easiest way to use an old file is simply open it. It's no import; for me that would indicate a transfer in data structure which is not the case. 

Fusion Electronics handles projects different than EAGLE does because we want to be open for new stuff coming soon. And let me tell you that I did not like the EAGLE way of handling projects very much.

Have a great day!

[engineeringNCMXB]

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@RichardHammerl wrote:

IMHO the easiest way to use an old file is simply open it. It's no import; for me that would indicate a transfer in data structure which is not the case. 

As far as I can tell....there is no way to 'simply open' an old file and maintain consistency. You have to manually associate the files together.

In Eagle, if I opened a schematic file, the associated PCB file would also open at the same time. They were safely linked so I could make changes to the either one. No problem. There is a control panel window that I could close out and the open project would be put to bed without risk to the consistency of the data.
Click on one thing to open a project.
Click on one thing to close a project.

If I just open a locally stored Eagle schematic in F360 it looks fine, but is no longer associated with the PCB data. The user has to click a number of buttons to get the two files married again. Being that it is the exact same sequence of mouse clicks for every single project - not sure why this would not behave the same as Eagle. All it is doing is opening the associated file that has the exact same name but with the opposite extension - .SCH or .BRD. At that point, it could do a consistency check and give the user the satisfaction of knowing the schematic and board are in fact tied together.

My logical expectation is that I could choose an Eagle SCH or BRD file, open it up, and the system would find its mate and open / associate it automatically. That would be easy and avoid the trap of making changes to a schematic that no longer has a PCB associated with it.

[RichardHammerl]

Hi Carlos,

I see your point and understand that this might be more convenient for bringing an EAGLE project into Fusion. 

But I do not see Fusion Electronics as the new EAGLE. It's more than that. We are starting a new era of product design in Fusion 360. 

The Fusion Electronics concept of handling projects changed. You have to create an Electronics Design first and then you can create a new schematic and from this create the board. Or you could also link an already existing schematic and create a board from it, or also link an existing board to the design/schematic. A ERC will check for consistency. No matter what the file name of sch and board are. 

The new design behaviour allows more flexibility. Think of new options like one schematic linked to a number of boards, or maybe several schematics linked to various boards in the design. 

Regards,

[engineeringNCMXB]

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@RichardHammerl wrote:

Hi Carlos,

I see your point and understand that this might be more convenient for bringing an EAGLE project into Fusion. 

But I do not see Fusion Electronics as the new EAGLE. It's more than that. We are starting a new era of product design in Fusion 360. 

This is a bizarre response.

Fusion Electronics is 99% Eagle running in a Fusion 360 window - but you are saying it is not the same.
Fusion Electronics is a new era, yet you are making it difficult and clumsy for existing customers to migrate to this new era.

Based on the totality of what has been said so far, it appears that Eagle is being setup for a slow death with marginal support on its way to the grave - but moving to Fusion 360 cannot even make importing existing projects simple.

I am TOTALLY excited about a new era. However, I cannot for the life of me understand why you would not prioritize user and data migration to take advantage of this new era in design. Perhaps I do not understand what your target market is, but as a seasoned professional product designer that functions as a mixed discipline engineer - I would think I am the target. I literally use every single feature of Fusion 360 personally - daily. I have been a business owner for 25 years. I see and understand the big picture of design, product development, team management, and business management.

The cavalier attitude is really unexpected. The responses I have gotten from Autodesk have collectively diminished my trust considerably.

[jorge_garcia]

Hey @engineeringNCMXB,

Remember this is a first release, it will get better as times goes on. I don't know if you mentioned it but I think you were an early adopter of Fusion360 as well. In the beginning Fusion360 was very rough and has improved over time.

As far as EAGLE's future I give you this:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/will-eagle-as-a-standalone-product-disappear-following-th...

It's going to be the same thing here. Currently, Fusion Electronics is mostly EAGLE but as time goes on things are going to diverge considerably. It's just a matter of having some patience. You mention you've been in business for 25 years, do you remember how your first year went? Something like that is going on here. You're being heard and stuff is being worked on, but as usual it can't come fast enough.

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

Best Regards,

[johnAMKDR]

Hi Jorge (if you're still around),

I came across this while trying to find out why Fusion 360 won't look for Eagle project files (*.epf) that I downloaded.

It just doesn't!

It hasn't gotten any better! Eagle has a lot of files out there, and it also has loads of people looking for a reason to dump it. Don't give them another one.

John

[HelenChen-ElectronicsQA]

Hi @johnAMKDR, 

Thank you very much for asking.

In July release, we have implemented the workflow to upload EAGLE files (matched schematic and board file with same file name) into Fusion 360, which will create the linked Electronics project file directly.

You could get more info from the What's New of July release. 

BTW, today Fusion just updated to latest version 2.0.14104 for Sep release, feel free to try this workflow in latest Fusion version. Hope it helps. Please feel free to let us know your feedback about this. Thanks a lot!

- July 2022 Product Update - What's New - Fusion 360 Blog (autodesk.com)

Best regards,

Helen