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Interesting that they're still using Eagle. I was using Sparkfun, Eagle, and KiCad back in 2013 and before when it was still with Cadsoft: https://learn.sparkf
by LeifCarrotson 6y ago
Interesting that they're still using Eagle. I was using Sparkfun, Eagle, and KiCad back in 2013 and before when it was still with Cadsoft:
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-eagle https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setu...
Even then, it was pretty limited: 100x80mm board size maximum, only 2 layers, 2 schematic pages, for personal use only, but Kicad was pretty hard to get configured. Altium, Cadence etc. were still the industrial behemoths.
But now Eagle is among the behemoths, owned by Autodesk. It requires a subscription and an Internet connection, the subscription is free for one year, and then costs $495/year to continue to get access to your files on Autodesk's cloud. One hazard I remember from projects at school in 2010 was that the school had an education/commercial license from Cadsoft (the original manufacturer) and you were essentially unlimited in the schematics and PCBs you could create. However, if you created a design on your laptop in the freeware version, opened it with a school computer using their paid license, you could no longer open it on your freeware license - that's a pretty old bug (or feature, depending on your definition. I trust that when Sparkfun sends back Eagle files, they're able to be opened by people with a "Fusion 360 Personal" subscription Eagle license.
Kicad is much, much easier to use today, especially after the big development push from CERN. And it's open source, so whether Sparkfun would want to extend it with Python scripting, write a plugin, or modify the software itself, something like this could be trivially automated.
The choice of Eagle seems to be obsolete by half a decade, when you're looking for a open-source-hardware electronics CAD package, especially if you'd want it to be scriptable and extensible, as I'm sure Sparkfun ALC is (I can't imagine they're paying someone in Colorado to route traces for $950). On the other hand, there's a lot of institutional inertia when all of Sparkfun's early designs were created in Eagle. Sparkfun is one of the big drivers of hobbyist Eagle adoption. I wonder if any early discussions of how to implement ALC were guided by an in-house Autodesk rep...
- amelius 6y agoHow is automatic placement and routing on Eagle versus Kicad?
- LeifCarrotson 6y agoBoth have an autorouter that does a reasonable job, though many PCB designers scoff at using one for most tasks. Kicad has a nice push-and-shove manual router, which Eagle didn't, though looking back I see they added one a few years back. Both placement systems just drop all your parts into a grid sorted by reference designator, Eagle doesn't (didn't?) have automatic placement optimization for minimizing ratsnest length, Kicad does have that, plus various plugins to lay out your board like the schematic, auto-place similar groups of components from the schematic hierarchy, etc. Both have trace length matching and can add a meander to reach a given length automatically, Kicad has a built-in impedance calculator. A critical difference is that Kicad isn't limited to 2-layers, and for small-run high-speed digital work a 4-layer board makes a lot of sense these days and significantly simplifies routing. When all your power and ground signals and decoupling caps just go to a via and then to the internal plane, there's a lot less work to do, and a lot more space in which to do it!
- amelius 6y agoAre you sure about Eagle being limited to 2 layers? I found this document from 2012, which demonstrates how to do 4 layers in Eagle: http://brc-electronics.nl/Generalfiles/Report2.pdf http://brc-electronics.nl/Generalfiles/Report2.pdf
- zachm0 6y agoLeifCarrotson was referring to the fact that the free version of Eagle is limited to 2 layers. You have to pay to get more than that.