Announcement: EAN-02 :: Managing EAGLE Directories

Oliver Betz wrote on Thu, 29 January 2009 03:14

James Morrison wrote:

 

>We've added a new http://www.eaglecentral.ca/eagle-appnotes/.

EAN-02 discusses the issues and perils of configuring the

"Directories" in EAGLE.

 

"Stratford Digital recommends adding a user folder as the base for all

EAGLE related design files and making it the highest priority."

 

Although this seems to mirror the way Cadsoft intended to use Eagle, I

strongly dislike the idea of one big tree of Eagle projects.

 

I put Eagle project files (epf, sch, brd and special project libs) in

subfolders of the product projects where I store also other design

files and docs.

Hello Oliver,

What we have suggested doesn't preclude having a large sub-tree of projects.  In fact, it would be the natural way to do it and is in fact how we work here.  But it means that you use the EAGLE Control Panel to move around and open projects.

Quote:

I invoke eagle while this directory is "current" and by passing the

epf file name to eagle. A simple association eith "epf" does the job

inWindows if you use one version of Eagle for all projects, but see

below.

 

In Eagle, I configure "." (only "."!) as the project root, and I add

"." to the other paths.

 

Then I navigate to the folder where my project resides and invoke

Eagle from there, in Windows by double clicking the epf file.

 

Besides this, I use a cmd file to select the matching Eagle version,

because I don't want to convert old projects unintentionally:

 

- snip -

@echo off

find "Version=""03 5" %1 >nul

if NOT errorlevel 1 (

     start X:\Path_to_Eagle3\eagle.exe %1

     exit /b

)

find "Version=""04 1" %1 >nul

if NOT errorlevel 1 (

     start X:\Path_to_Eagle4\eagle.exe %1

     exit /b

)

find "Version=""05 0" %1 >nul

if NOT errorlevel 1 (

        start X:\Path_to_Eagle5\eagle.exe %1

     exit /b

)

echo Unknown epf version

pause

- snip -

 

It should be trivial to make a similar shell script for the *x world.

 

If you don't intend to change old projects and you are using Eagle 5,

this batch file is not needed, because Eagle 5 doesn't change the epf

unasked (earlier versions did).

 

Oliver

While I can see that this will work, I'm not sure I'd go to that extent.  I actually like having a big tree of projects.  It makes revision control easier for one thing.

And the point of this app note was to help newbies understand how things work.  I'd say your setup is more advanced.  For new users who start with EAGLE 5 then there isn't the concern of auto-updating projects.

Thanks for the input though.  You've obviously thought about this before

Cheers,

James.

--

James Morrison  ~~~  Stratford Digital

email:  sales2009@eaglecentral.ca

fax:    888.701.8097

web:    http://www.eaglecentral.ca

Online EAGLE Dealer for US and Canada

EAGLE Design Experts

EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

--

Browser access to CadSoft Support Forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca

Oliver Betz wrote on Thu, 29 January 2009 03:14

James Morrison wrote:

 

>We've added a new http://www.eaglecentral.ca/eagle-appnotes/.

EAN-02 discusses the issues and perils of configuring the

"Directories" in EAGLE.

 

"Stratford Digital recommends adding a user folder as the base for all

EAGLE related design files and making it the highest priority."

 

Although this seems to mirror the way Cadsoft intended to use Eagle, I

strongly dislike the idea of one big tree of Eagle projects.

 

I put Eagle project files (epf, sch, brd and special project libs) in

subfolders of the product projects where I store also other design

files and docs.

Hello Oliver,

What we have suggested doesn't preclude having a large sub-tree of projects.  In fact, it would be the natural way to do it and is in fact how we work here.  But it means that you use the EAGLE Control Panel to move around and open projects.

Quote:

I invoke eagle while this directory is "current" and by passing the

epf file name to eagle. A simple association eith "epf" does the job

inWindows if you use one version of Eagle for all projects, but see

below.

 

In Eagle, I configure "." (only "."!) as the project root, and I add

"." to the other paths.

 

Then I navigate to the folder where my project resides and invoke

Eagle from there, in Windows by double clicking the epf file.

 

Besides this, I use a cmd file to select the matching Eagle version,

because I don't want to convert old projects unintentionally:

 

- snip -

@echo off

find "Version=""03 5" %1 >nul

if NOT errorlevel 1 (

     start X:\Path_to_Eagle3\eagle.exe %1

     exit /b

)

find "Version=""04 1" %1 >nul

if NOT errorlevel 1 (

     start X:\Path_to_Eagle4\eagle.exe %1

     exit /b

)

find "Version=""05 0" %1 >nul

if NOT errorlevel 1 (

        start X:\Path_to_Eagle5\eagle.exe %1

     exit /b

)

echo Unknown epf version

pause

- snip -

 

It should be trivial to make a similar shell script for the *x world.

 

If you don't intend to change old projects and you are using Eagle 5,

this batch file is not needed, because Eagle 5 doesn't change the epf

unasked (earlier versions did).

 

Oliver

While I can see that this will work, I'm not sure I'd go to that extent.  I actually like having a big tree of projects.  It makes revision control easier for one thing.

And the point of this app note was to help newbies understand how things work.  I'd say your setup is more advanced.  For new users who start with EAGLE 5 then there isn't the concern of auto-updating projects.

Thanks for the input though.  You've obviously thought about this before

Cheers,

James.

--

James Morrison  ~~~  Stratford Digital

email:  sales2009@eaglecentral.ca

fax:    888.701.8097

web:    http://www.eaglecentral.ca

Online EAGLE Dealer for US and Canada

EAGLE Design Experts

EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

--

Browser access to CadSoft Support Forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca