Out of the Box Gripes

"James Morrison" <james@eaglecentral.ca> wrote in message

news:hhj6ri$urt$1@cheetah.cadsoft.de...

Hello everyone,

 

EAGLE is quite powerful and flexible.  But with great flexibility comes

great irritation if you don't know how to do it (or even that you can).

And new users may either get discouraged and leave the community, work

inefficiently for years and not realise it, or even worse, not realise an

easy to fix issue and get back boards that don't work (thinking of cam job

mirroring of bottom layer).

 

So what is on your list of things that EAGLE could configure better out of

the box.  I'm not talking about any new functionality.  I'm thinking about

things that EAGLE will do, but is just not configured out of the box.  Or

things that everyone does the first time they install EAGLE.

 

Here's a start, please add to it.  This is meant to make EAGLE even

better,

not just annoy people, so try to be constructive   Hopefully the new

people at Newark will take this list seriously as it greatly effects that

first impression new users get.  A bad one and they might never come back.

 

1)  bill of materials and x-y data generation integrated, documented, and

supported.

 

2)  advanced find integrated, documented, and supported

 

3)  better use of colour pallette and default values other than indices

16-63 being gray (or grey if you like)

 

4)  default CAM jobs mirror bottom layer, shouldn't be done normally

 

5)  key assignments for all normal activities, documented and supported.

Of course, users can make their own changes by editing eagle.scr etc, but

again most users don't really know that is possible.  And a template

document that you can edit to give new employees the cheat sheet.

 

That's a start, I'm sure there are a ton more.

 

Cheers,

 

James.

--

James Morrison  ~~~  Stratford Digital

 

email:  james@eaglecentral.ca

web: http://www.eaglecentral.ca

 

Specialising in CadSoft EAGLE

• Online Sales to North America

• Electronic Design Services

• EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

--

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

Hello James,

I am listing some of the sames 'gripes' as have been listed already, but

just wanted to give some input about what I experience with customers.

*Vector font output - confusion about being about to design with

proportional or fixed font, but only outputs vector.

*CAM jobs mirroring bottom side layers by default.

*Stacked pad issue - When the name of the layer contains the $ character,

pads and vias need to be deselected during output.  If not, it creates a pad

and clearance in the same spot.

As far as documentation, it may not be a bad idea to have a list of errors

(with screenshots) and some explanation on how to resolve the issue.  For

example, 'Invalid Polygon' error for files created in older versions of

EAGLE; 5.0 now recognizes the invalid polygons, while older versions do not.

And another off the top of my head, 'Polygon may cause extremely large plot

data'... when the polygon width is too small.  There are more, but these

come to mind right now.

I know that the answers can be found in the documentation and/or help menu,

but having the list would save tons of time on searching and hoping that the

search terms that you are using are correct.

That's all I have for now!

Best regards,

Terri

"James Morrison" <james@eaglecentral.ca> wrote in message

news:hhj6ri$urt$1@cheetah.cadsoft.de...

Hello everyone,

 

EAGLE is quite powerful and flexible.  But with great flexibility comes

great irritation if you don't know how to do it (or even that you can).

And new users may either get discouraged and leave the community, work

inefficiently for years and not realise it, or even worse, not realise an

easy to fix issue and get back boards that don't work (thinking of cam job

mirroring of bottom layer).

 

So what is on your list of things that EAGLE could configure better out of

the box.  I'm not talking about any new functionality.  I'm thinking about

things that EAGLE will do, but is just not configured out of the box.  Or

things that everyone does the first time they install EAGLE.

 

Here's a start, please add to it.  This is meant to make EAGLE even

better,

not just annoy people, so try to be constructive   Hopefully the new

people at Newark will take this list seriously as it greatly effects that

first impression new users get.  A bad one and they might never come back.

 

1)  bill of materials and x-y data generation integrated, documented, and

supported.

 

2)  advanced find integrated, documented, and supported

 

3)  better use of colour pallette and default values other than indices

16-63 being gray (or grey if you like)

 

4)  default CAM jobs mirror bottom layer, shouldn't be done normally

 

5)  key assignments for all normal activities, documented and supported.

Of course, users can make their own changes by editing eagle.scr etc, but

again most users don't really know that is possible.  And a template

document that you can edit to give new employees the cheat sheet.

 

That's a start, I'm sure there are a ton more.

 

Cheers,

 

James.

--

James Morrison  ~~~  Stratford Digital

 

email:  james@eaglecentral.ca

web: http://www.eaglecentral.ca

 

Specialising in CadSoft EAGLE

• Online Sales to North America

• Electronic Design Services

• EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

--

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

Hello James,

I am listing some of the sames 'gripes' as have been listed already, but

just wanted to give some input about what I experience with customers.

*Vector font output - confusion about being about to design with

proportional or fixed font, but only outputs vector.

*CAM jobs mirroring bottom side layers by default.

*Stacked pad issue - When the name of the layer contains the $ character,

pads and vias need to be deselected during output.  If not, it creates a pad

and clearance in the same spot.

As far as documentation, it may not be a bad idea to have a list of errors

(with screenshots) and some explanation on how to resolve the issue.  For

example, 'Invalid Polygon' error for files created in older versions of

EAGLE; 5.0 now recognizes the invalid polygons, while older versions do not.

And another off the top of my head, 'Polygon may cause extremely large plot

data'... when the polygon width is too small.  There are more, but these

come to mind right now.

I know that the answers can be found in the documentation and/or help menu,

but having the list would save tons of time on searching and hoping that the

search terms that you are using are correct.

That's all I have for now!

Best regards,

Terri