Altering footprints on board (not in library)

Ben Whitman schrieb:

Is there any way to edit a device footprint on the board layout,

without editing the lbr?

No.

I find it very frustrating trying to get my

silkscreen layers the way I want when some libraries (even some of

the official ones that ship with EAGLE) are inconsistent when it

comes to documentation layers.  For the most part, I find that the

tPlace and tNames layers should go on the top silkscreen, and the

same for bPlace and bNames on the bottom.  This is consistent with

most chips, as tPlace tends to be the layer containing the pin 1

indicator dot or edge notch, and I don't tend to clutter my board

with values on the silkscreen (I can always just refer back to the

schematic.  However, some parts, like the USB-B connector in

con-cypressindustries, have a lot of extraneous part outlining on

tPlace that I don't want on my silkscreen.

Welcome to the world of bad libraries. The only libraries you can trust

are those that you created by yourself. Many of the parts coming with

EAGLE contain bloated silkscreen data.

I would like to be able

to selectively change layers on parts on the board layout and set all

of that outline to tDocu (where I think it belongs in the first

place).

Does this make sense? What if you need that part again later? If you

change it, change it at the right position - the effort is the same anyway.

While we're at it: use and modify only your own set of libraries. If you

really want to use a device from the provided libraries (and think you

can trust in it), copy it to your own libraries.

You can currently change the layers of the names and values

if you smash the part, but as far as I can tell, you can't change

anything else.  As it is, I have to disable the tPlace layer entirely

and copy all of the lines/dots/etc. that I want by hand into my own

user-defined layer in order to get my silkscreen right without all of

the extra crap I don't want.  This is stupid.

Yes, in this context this method is ... not the right one.

BTW, it's much more effort than simply changing layers in the package

definition of the library, don't you agree?

EAGLE uses a library based device concept. The definitions in the

libraries need to be correct. If they aren't (or don't match your design

rules), fix them there - not in the board.

I really hope I'm just

missing something here.  Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong, or

is EAGLE just not capable of handling this?

I tried to answer both of these questions.

Tilmann

Yeah, that answers my questions... not necessarily the answer I was hoping for, but an answer nonetheless.  I was hoping to avoid duplicating the standard libraries, but I guess that's just how it has to be. And yes, that is a better solution than what I am doing currently.