Did autodesk fold in on Eagle?

On Tue, 14 Jan 2020 10:31:25 +0100, Morten Leikvoll

wrote:

I got this email from autodesk:

|As of January 7th, 2020, Autodesk EAGLE will now be included as a part

|of a Fusion 360 subscription. All users maintain access to your

|existing EAGLE software while gaining access to Fusion 360 at no

|additional charge.

 

I suspect autodesk is slowly giving up on this business, and that my

long wanted features never will see the day.

It is sad for the Eagle community and a huge threshold to climb for

those of us needing to move to a different software.

From a friend who works at Autodesk.  Eagle as a stand-alone product

is gone,  Now it's just another module.

I don't understand continuing to waste time on Eagle from  a company

which hates it's customers.

KiCAD is FOSS and vastly superior. CERN is funding the project to the

extent that there are a couple of full-time developers working on it

plus the many volunteers.

KiCAD has a module to import Eagle files.  I tried it on my largest

board, one with about 450 components.  Imported with no fuss and I

didn't have to make any corrections.

I'm on the KiCAD developer's list (I'm NOT a developer. I mostly lurk

and occasionally offer experience-based advice.

The newest version is ready for release.  I'm not sure whether it's

actually out there in the free world.  If not, it will be in a couple

of weeks.

The open source hardware community has, for the most part, converted

to KiCAD.

Just do it.

John

John DeArmond

http://www.neon-john.com

http://www.tnduction.com

Tellico Plains, Occupied TN

See website for email address

autodeskguest  wrote:

 

KiCAD is FOSS and vastly superior.

 

Vastly superior to some perhaps. Lets be honest it's also clunky in a lot of ways, despite the CERN effort for years. I've been trying to learn it for the past few weeks, and there's lots that EAGLE does right that KiCAD doesn't, as far as the user interface goes. EAGLE doesn't try to conform to Windows conventions. It's like the RPN of calculators. I've also been tempted by Pulsonix, because it is written by the same people who did Visula and CadSTAR - the former was spectacularly good, and CadSTAR was pretty good before it got bloated.

Anyway, regardless of my criticism, I'm still planning to move off EAGLE to KiCAD - for now. If better software comes along I'll switch to it.

KiCAD has a module to import Eagle files.

It has a capability to import some EAGLE files. It doesn't import library files, unless that's some feature that's really well hidden.

And the various bits of open source out there that people have written as attempts to fix that, are out-of-date because it looks like KiCAD library format changed.

As a result, I've been busy writing my own code to interwork with KiCAD library file format..

autodeskguest  wrote:

 

KiCAD is FOSS and vastly superior.

 

Vastly superior to some perhaps. Lets be honest it's also clunky in a lot of ways, despite the CERN effort for years. I've been trying to learn it for the past few weeks, and there's lots that EAGLE does right that KiCAD doesn't, as far as the user interface goes. EAGLE doesn't try to conform to Windows conventions. It's like the RPN of calculators. I've also been tempted by Pulsonix, because it is written by the same people who did Visula and CadSTAR - the former was spectacularly good, and CadSTAR was pretty good before it got bloated.

Anyway, regardless of my criticism, I'm still planning to move off EAGLE to KiCAD - for now. If better software comes along I'll switch to it.

KiCAD has a module to import Eagle files.

It has a capability to import some EAGLE files. It doesn't import library files, unless that's some feature that's really well hidden.

And the various bits of open source out there that people have written as attempts to fix that, are out-of-date because it looks like KiCAD library format changed.

As a result, I've been busy writing my own code to interwork with KiCAD library file format..

On 1/02/2020 2:15 pm, shabaz wrote:

  wrote:

 

KiCAD is FOSS and vastly superior.

 

Vastly superior to some perhaps. Lets be honest it's also clunky in a lot of ways, despite the CERN effort for years. I've been trying to learn it for the past few weeks, and there's lots that EAGLE does right that KiCAD doesn't, as far as the user interface goes. EAGLE doesn't try to conform to Windows conventions. It's like the RPN of calculators. I've also been tempted by Pulsonix, because it is written by the same people who did Visula and CadSTAR - the former was spectacularly good, and CadSTAR was pretty good before it got bloated.

Anyway, regardless of my criticism, I'm still planning to move off EAGLE to KiCAD - for now. If better software comes along I'll switch to it.

 

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I will give KICAD a go when I make some time. I need to find some

tuition on Kicad native library usage which links symbol and package,

like Eagle does, hence you don't need to link them with every design.

I saw this referred to in a Kicad project I read about a year ago but

have not pursued it further, since.

If anyone knows of such an article describing the process I would

appreciate knowing of it.

Thanks

Warren

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On 01/02/2020 01:41, warrenbrayshaw wrote:

 

I will give KICAD a go when I make some time. I need to find some

tuition on Kicad native library usage which links symbol and package,

like Eagle does, hence you don't need to link them with every design.

Is that a new feature?

To be honest, from what I saw of KiCAD when I tried it, it's a VERY long

way from being a patch on Eagle V7, never mind the latest V9.5.2

I have a permanent license for V7 so I don't need to downgrade to KiCAD.

I have not seen that so far, but maybe I've missed it and it is there.

However, I' wondering perhaps there is some programmatic way we can do that ourselves via auto-modifying the design files, without modifying any of the KiCAD binaries.

I have not started looking at that yet, but began with seeing how to prorammatically create footprints (i.e. packages), mainly so I can continue to use a command line tool to generate them (I did it with EAGLE using custom code: https://github.com/shabaz123/Shabaz-EAGLE-tools  ) and to get familiar with the package file format. I'm going to do it in Python this time, not C. There are already some existing Python libraries for manipulating packages, so I have tried understanding them, and managed to put pads into a package file using code so far, so baby steps.

Anyway for the scenario that you mention, I'll try examining where the relationship between symbol and package gets stored per schematic, so that even if KiCAD does not natively support it, perhaps we could have a Python script to run that would auto-associate the symbol to the package, e.g. from a text file of associations.

On 01/02/2020 10:17, shabaz wrote:

Anyway for the scenario that you mention, I'll try examining where the relationship between symbol and package gets stored per schematic, so that even if KiCAD does not natively support it, perhaps we could have a Python script to run that would auto-associate the symbol to the package, e.g. from a text file of associations.

I'm not sure I believe I'm saying this, as a Gentoo Linux user and GPSim

developer, but...

I really have no interest in a tool that I have to write half of myself

just to make it work. Until the KiCAD core developers come round to the

Eagle way of thinking, it's ruled out for me.

I've given up waiting for that.. I doubt KiCAD developers are going to come around unless they spend time with EAGLE.

I'm willing to spend an hour or so per week for a few months to see if I feel comfortable enough with it, along with any minor bits of code I create. If I don't feel comfortable at the end of the exercise, so be it. I still have EAGLE.

I'm a great fan of scripting/coding minor things if it means less messing about with clicking mouse-buttons just to associate symbols with packages.

I had to script minor/code things with EAGLE too.

Maybe we should start a thread to explore/document the minor things we can do to make KiCAD more friendly to use (from EAGLE users perspective). For example, as soon as it is installed, it needs a config change just to make the scrollable zoom more EAGLE-like. By default the zoom is not EAGLE-like.

On 1/02/2020 11:17 pm, shabaz wrote:

I have not seen that so far, but maybe I've missed it and it is there.

I found this article which appears explain what I was referring to.

Footprints and symbols can be linked.  Looks as if it has some focus in V5

https://forum.kicad.info/t/how-can-i-assign-a-footprint-to-a-symbol/8901

HTH

Warren

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Hi Warren,

Thanks for the link.

I explored KiCAD a bit today, and noticed some symbols in the library are already associated with footprints, so that's great that the mechanism exists.

Also, I explored the file formats a little bit, and they are fairly understandable (I didn't think they wouldn't be, but I wanted to get familiar with what they look like).

if I get any further I'll start a different thread (maybe called "EAGLE to KiCAD Experiments" or something) so that the information is more easy to find than on this thread we've hijacked : )

On 3/02/2020 10:09 am, shabaz wrote:

Hi Warren,

 

Thanks for the link.

I explored KiCAD a bit today, and noticed some symbols in the library are already associated with footprints, so that's great that the mechanism exists.

Also, I explored the file formats a little bit, and they are fairly understandable (I didn't think they wouldn't be, but I wanted to get familiar with what they look like).

if I get any further I'll start a different thread (maybe called "EAGLE to KiCAD Experiments" or something) so that the information is more easy to find than on this thread we've hijacked : )

 

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It's a good idea to start a new thread but I'll add a little more here

to clarify/correct what I wrote earlier.

Here is a new link to a document titled "KiCad Library Convention"

https://kicad-pcb.org/libraries/klc/

Within it there is a section "Fully specified symbols"/

That term "Atomic part" is the term I did not get correct earlier.

Then it says "The official library requires fully specified symbols

except for a small number of libraries that contain only generic symbols."

So Kicad has transitioned to a library model similar to Eagle

I suspect a ULP should be able to convert our personal Eagle libraries

to atomic parts.

HTH

Warren

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On 2/2/2020 22:09, shabaz wrote:

Hi Warren,

 

Thanks for the link.

I explored KiCAD a bit today, and noticed some symbols in the library are already associated with footprints, so that's great that the mechanism exists.

Also, I explored the file formats a little bit, and they are fairly understandable (I didn't think they wouldn't be, but I wanted to get familiar with what they look like).

if I get any further I'll start a different thread (maybe called "EAGLE to KiCAD Experiments" or something) so that the information is more easy to find than on this thread we've hijacked : )

 

I am starting to think this forum may not survive for long. Maybe there

should be an official ex-eagle users forum available to old timers?

Maybe there exist a kicad thread?

Am 03.02.2020 um 10:21 schrieb Morten Leikvoll:

 

I am starting to think this forum may not survive for long. Maybe there

should be an official ex-eagle users forum available to old timers?

Maybe there exist a kicad thread?

Hi Morten,

I fear too about the survival.

I recently checked out my earlier contacts, but most of them working at

institutes. Eagle central is off (imho). The only site active I found is

bob starr. Question is if he would do it and if it suits the other old

timers?

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen / With best regards

Joern Paschedag