mechanical layer in eagle layout

vadryn P schrieb:

Great job for all the help you've been providing thus far. I work with a lot

of mechanical engineers, often my board layout files have no dimensions on

them. How do I display dimensions, distances with eagle layout and generate

a file that the ME guys can use to make an enclosure or design around the

board.

There are no automatic metrics with EAGLE.

I use the "measures" layer (47) to draw guidelines and sizes in it - all

manually. However, since these are normally very few I can live with that.

For your "ME guys" you might also do an export to DXF - normally they

are lucky with that. Just export all mechanically relevant layers

(dimension, milling, eventually measures).

Tilmann

vadryn P wrote:

Hi all,

 

Great job for all the help you've been providing thus far. I work with a lot

of mechanical engineers, often my board layout files have no dimensions on

them. How do I display dimensions, distances with eagle layout and generate

a file that the ME guys can use to make an enclosure or design around the

board.

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

regards,

 

vadryn

 

 

You may also want to look at the 3rd party product Eagle PCB Power

Tools.   You can download it from the downloads area but needs a licen$e

  for the measures to work.   I eventually bought and used this package

for some of my designs.   It took a bit if fiddling to get things to

work the way I wanted but it definitely does generate dimension lines.

  One of the tools will automatically generate dimension lines "..for

all visible objects..".   You have to be a little careful which layers

are turned on when you generate the dimensions or you will get a real

mess!

Caveats about the tool (from my limited experience)

1.  The dimension lines don't automatically update if you move them around.

2.  I could find no way to edit the length of a dimension line manually

3.  If you change the size or relative position of things the dimensions

don't automatically move around so you have to clear out the dimension

layer and then re-run the tool.

Generating a dxf is a good solution (included w/ Eagle already) and

gives a more complete definition of the mechanicals ... but the mech-e

has to actually load up the dxf and measure things!

Jim

there is a ULP "adimv4_0" that can be downloaded that puts dimensions

around the board. i use it but don't like it much.

a better solution is to export the dimension as dxf and pull the

dimensions out of it in your mechanical CAD program.

there are also some tools that generate 3D representations of the board

to use in CAD systems. search the forums for the ongoing discussion of them.

Thank you all for the input. I tried exporting the brd file as dxf, it gave

me option for net list and a bmp image file. I apologize for my ignorance

and I will further consult the manual for further guidance. Up til this

point, I don't know how to export as dxf, though it seems to be common

knowledge in this post. I am happy to learn from anyone willing to elaborate

some simple steps.

sincerely yours,

vadryn

"Gary Gofstein" <nospam@use.forum.net> wrote in message

news:hk7fdo$k0q$2@cheetah.cadsoft.de...

there is a ULP "adimv4_0" that can be downloaded that puts dimensions

around the board. i use it but don't like it much.

 

a better solution is to export the dimension as dxf and pull the

dimensions out of it in your mechanical CAD program.

 

there are also some tools that generate 3D representations of the board to

use in CAD systems. search the forums for the ongoing discussion of them.

Ok, If I understand from my research, it should be a function of using a

dxf.ulp file. Is that correct or is there more to it.

thanks

vp

"vadryn P" <vadrynpierre@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:hkbl58$34j$1@cheetah.cadsoft.de...

Thank you all for the input. I tried exporting the brd file as dxf, it

gave me option for net list and a bmp image file. I apologize for my

ignorance and I will further consult the manual for further guidance. Up

til this point, I don't know how to export as dxf, though it seems to be

common knowledge in this post. I am happy to learn from anyone willing to

elaborate some simple steps.

 

sincerely yours,

vadryn

"Gary Gofstein" <nospam@use.forum.net> wrote in message

news:hk7fdo$k0q$2@cheetah.cadsoft.de...

there is a ULP "adimv4_0" that can be downloaded that puts dimensions

around the board. i use it but don't like it much.

 

a better solution is to export the dimension as dxf and pull the

dimensions out of it in your mechanical CAD program.

 

there are also some tools that generate 3D representations of the board

to use in CAD systems. search the forums for the ongoing discussion of

them.

Yes...use dxf.ulp

vadryn P wrote:

Ok, If I understand from my research, it should be a function of using a

dxf.ulp file. Is that correct or is there more to it.

 

thanks

vp

"vadryn P" <vadrynpierre@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:hkbl58$34j$1@cheetah.cadsoft.de...

Thank you all for the input. I tried exporting the brd file as dxf, it

gave me option for net list and a bmp image file. I apologize for my

ignorance and I will further consult the manual for further guidance. Up

til this point, I don't know how to export as dxf, though it seems to be

common knowledge in this post. I am happy to learn from anyone willing to

elaborate some simple steps.

 

sincerely yours,

vadryn

"Gary Gofstein" <nospam@use.forum.net> wrote in message

news:hk7fdo$k0q$2@cheetah.cadsoft.de...

there is a ULP "adimv4_0" that can be downloaded that puts dimensions

around the board. i use it but don't like it much.

 

a better solution is to export the dimension as dxf and pull the

dimensions out of it in your mechanical CAD program.

 

there are also some tools that generate 3D representations of the board

to use in CAD systems. search the forums for the ongoing discussion of

them.