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Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

cstanton — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:04:59 GMT

Effective June 7, 2026, Autodesk will no longer sell nor support EAGLE. New and active Fusion 360 and Fusion 360 with EAGLE Premium subscriptions will continue to give you access to Fusion 360 electronics as well as EAGLE Premium functionality until EAGLE is no longer supported in June 2026.

Fusion 360 with EAGLE Standard subscriptions will no longer renew after June 7, 2024. It’s recommended to subscribe to Fusion 360 for access to the electronics workspace.

A subscription to Fusion 360 includes fully integrated CAD, CAM, CAE, and PCB functionality and includes up to 999 schematics, 16 layers, and an unlimited board area.

This document will cover the Frequently Asked Questions around the Autodesk EAGLE Announcement – Next Steps and FAQ.

To navigate to a specific section, click any of the links below. Use ‘Return to Top’ in each section to navigate quickly back to the top of the web page.

Source: https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-EAGLE-Announcement-Next-steps-and-FAQ.html

Time to move on to another product, like KiCad!

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

shabaz — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 16:34:07 GMT

FreeCAD for sure is not anywhere near as good, but it depends how sophisticated your needs are.

I learned how to do this with just a week or two of practice: (it's a cap for a thermal camera (I lost the original piece). It fitted perfectly first-time.

For sure this is not very sophisticated, and FreeCAD might not be usable at all for higher-end designs that Fusion is good at.

Another weird shape.. this too was one of the first pieces I managed to create with FreeCAD (I'm a total beginner at any 3D CAD).

FreeCAD also has some specialist stuff like sheet-metal design capabilities.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

sauerwald — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 16:16:15 GMT

I am torn. I had an Eagle Pro license before Autocad took over. I am not a fan of the subscription model, but I grudgingly signed up. I started using Fusion360 for the mechanical designs, and although I prefer Solidworks, Fusion360 was 'free' and it worked for me. In the meantime, Eagle has been migrating away from some of the things that brought me to the tool in the first place. At this point I am slowly migrating the electronic designs to KiCAD, but will probably keep my subscription to Fusion just to continue to support the mechanical cad designs. In theory having an integrated mechanical/electronic CAD tool sounds great, but in practice, I have found it not to be very useful.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

dougw — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 17:44:22 GMT

Understandably every software company looks for ways to create a continuous revenue stream from their offerings in the form of periodic fees of some sort. Of course users just want the most value for the least cost. Ultimately companies often end up not selling a product, just a service, or a license to use for a period, or a pay-per-use, or update fees, etc. Consumers will opt out if the fees get too high. The only choice they have is to weigh the total costs, including their sunk investments in legacy designs. In the case of CAD there is such a large investment in learning to use the tool efficiently and of course their legacy designs and IP, that hefty update or license fees are cheaper than the cost of switching. CAD software companies exploit this situation extensively.

The original Eagle product was a decent price point and it had a useful free version, which resulted in more users than all of the major CAD company "seats" combined. Which is one of the reasons Autodesk bought it.

The main reasons why users adopted Eagle were essentially eliminated when Autodesk reworked the licensing model, but they still retained some of the client base that had invested in the learning curve. I am curious how many seats still use Autodesk E-Cad.

Those users that had been flocking to Eagle are now flocking to KiCad.

The whole thing about keeping up-to-date is a separate problem. Bug fixes should always be free, but unfortunately they aren't always free, they are often bundled with feature upgrades which have a cost. It is actually a much more complex issue, and everyone is going to have their own opinion about how tolerable various aspects are.

I am glad that KiCad is a viable alternative although it doesn't seem to be influencing the big for-profit CAD company business models.

The choices I've made make my design flow the lowest possible cost ($0) and I can still re-use all my library work and legacy design work and my productivity is higher than I it would be with any other CAD tool.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

Andrew J — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:42:28 GMT

I'd never thought about it on that basis actually, but it seems like a good point. Then again, the only monthly subscription I ever had was for Adobe and that was something like £9.98 so I doubt I would have been impacted!

I have a yearly subscription to Microsoft 365, Amazon Prime and a three year subscription to Fusion 360 but none of those would appear as regular outgoings.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

Andrew J — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:39:26 GMT

yes, companies. I reckon it also improves the cashflow for software companies who produce the product.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

shabaz — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:57:20 GMT

I thought surely there can't be more than a few hundred new EAGLE users at best per year, but their tutorial video suggests something different.

32k views within 7 months! Surprised they have so many newcomers adopting it.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

cstanton — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:51:33 GMT

[quote userid="188728" url="~/products/eagle/f/eagle-user-chat-english/54409/autodesk-eagle-announcement---time-to-move-on/219914"]Funny how polarising software subscription licensing is![/quote]

On a personal note, it always flags up in my mind when I go to the bank and ask them to check my financial status, say for a potential mortgage or loan or any other financial assessment. They look at regular monthly outgoings, so I want to avoid subscriptions as that's seen as detrimental to any finance. Being able to do a monthly payment is important in those scenarios and anything that eats into it regularly does not look good.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

shabaz — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:40:36 GMT

It might also be quite a risky thing to begin to do nowadays, to invest time to learn EAGLE within Fusion 360, with the risk that the electronics functionality would merely be one of many features in Fusion 360, with completely unrelated mechanical CAD features sometimes taking priority over the PCB CAD features in each release, especially if the PCB features wouldn't drive much more business to Fusion 360 compared to more demanded mechanical CAD functions.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

Jan Cumps — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:11:34 GMT

For companies and bigger customers, it is may be easier? A yearly cost instead of an investment?

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

Andrew J — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 15:07:48 GMT

Funny how polarising software subscription licensing is! It seems to be a marmite scenario for people. Personally, I've never had an issue with it and there is some software for which it can work out cheaper to subscribe for when it is needed and let it lapse when it isn't. Fusion 360 can be subscribed to for £60 a month for example, or IIRC, £550 a year. The only time it seems that subscription fails is when someone isn't that bothered about keeping up to date, like yourself and a perpetual model makes sense.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

Oppie51 — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:56:16 GMT

I too, have Eagle 7pro and had no interest in joining the autodesk fold.

Eagle v8 licensing...

technolomaniac — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 19:26:46 GMT

Hi All --

Moving this to a separate thread so it doesn't get lost in the ether. Here's my two cents on licensing and I'd love your feedback:

Firstly, the Autodesk licensing model is subscription and the EAGLE paid license will require that you install the SW and then generate an account to retrieve your license entitlement. Once you have this, you are good to go and the SW will run as expected. If you lose your network connection, the SW has a 14-day heartbeat that will enable you to work offline for 14 days. I know that some folks would prefer to never have to connect, but this is required to support a monthly subscription model that can be selectively enabled and disabled when you use the SW (so you only pay when you use it). The total cost of ownership for those folks using it less than a few weeks a year will thus be substantially lower and still enables you to access the full software for less money. <Insert revolt here> [View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/communityserver-discussions-components-files/309/3581.contentimage_5F00_3.png:16:16]

WRT to "what happens if autodesk decides to one day just shut off the license server?" ...ok, sure, that's possible, but so is a reality TV star becoming President of the..cough...nevermind, bad example.

Point is, that's a pretty remote possibility (think: time travel and alien invasions) and it wouldn't benefit us *at all* to upset the users we just spent real money hoping to bring into autodesk and earn their business. As the guy with both development and P&L for the product, I can tell you that it's counterintuitive and wouldn't benefit us at all. We know this. We make SW used by governments, movie studios, game developers, MEs, Civil Engineers, machinists, etc. and you can bet that shutting down a license server is not to our benefit in any of these categories. To demonstrate this behavior in one category, without a path for user SW and data, calls into question ALL of our tools' viability under this model. Not helpful.

Now...a question was raised about "but what if I drop my subscription and I want my data". Awesome, the data is yours and lives on your machine. And for SW that stores data in the cloud (we have some of these) we always provide a path to your data. If this again fails with one product, it puts all of the others up for discussion. Again, not helpful. (Read: strategy = doomed).

"So what about needing an entitlement for the freeware to open the data I created in another version (a *paid* version) and reading it? What if I want access and I dont want the 14-day time out?"

So here's the deal...We can do better here. So we will. Here's my commitment to the group here for freeware that ensures you always have a license that you can fall back on without need of internet connection *except when you first install it* (which after all, you would have had to get it in the first place): in version 8.1 or 8.0.1 or whathaveyou (let's call it 'a future release'), if you install the SW and authenticate once, we'll remove the timer req. So what I'm saying another way is, the freeware will require you to login the first time to get your license, but if you log out beyond that, you're good. You got your entitlement and you can use it freely without connection.

Caveat: to install an update, you will need to login. The update server (which issues the new version...e.g. 8.1 or 8.2. or 8.0.1, etc.) requires that you login and get the update, but beyond that, logout. Thus if you want to go off-grid in a mountain cabin somewhere, get your license at Starbucks (blagh! I understand they have 'free' wifi, but no frappucinos! ...that stuff is bad for you) then get your license and go on your merry way up to the snow drenched peaks. When you hear from the other mountaineers or your local yodeler that a new version of EAGLE is available...download, login, get your license, get your 'decaf double-pump vanilla non-fat latte macchiato' and head back up the slopes.

Point being, we can do the freeware better. So we will.

Hope this is clear. Let us know if you have questions!

Best regards,

Matt Berggren

Director - Autodesk

@technolomaniac

hackaday.io/matt

RE: Eagle v8 licensing...

cstanton — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:31:59 GMT

Let's not jump to conclusions.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

dougw — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:23:41 GMT

Autodesk lost me when they went to a subscription business model. However I still own an old version of Eagle that I use to design 10-20 PCBs per year. KiCad is at a stage where I could switch, but I don't think it would improve my productivity for most of what I do, so I'm not feeling a great need to switch at this time.

RE: Eagle v8 licensing...

1470aries — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:16:39 GMT

What do you mean a "spam prep"? There was a problem with the forum that when I chose to quote, it would not let me write in the same comment, so I had to write what I wanted as a reply to myself.

Although, we are now in the future, and they are turning the service off. Only the old perpetual licences will work that did NOT need to PHONE HOME every two weeks to work.

So, just read the link for what it states. Just the very old version that could work in offline mode would still continue working.

It would be great if they at least released the software as "freeware" the original on its own, like Eagle series 9, and remove the "fortnightly call home" function, since if you use Samacsys / componentsearchengine, you can be updating your library from there.

So, WHERE else did I try it today, as you say "Same User"? shabaz

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

Andrew J — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:44:15 GMT

A Fusion 360 subscription gives access to the PCB/Schematic functionality and I guess for those doing product design it may make sense to keep everything together in one project. Sounds like what was Eagle is now being subsumed as functionality into Fusion 360 so it feels like the brand is going rather than the functionality.

I have a Fusion 360 subscription but I've not tried the Electronics Workspace because I'm way more familiar with KiCad and wouldn't want to get tied in to a subscription fee.

RE: Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

Fred27 — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:38:24 GMT

I really can't see why anyone would chose anything other than KiCad now.

RE: Eagle v8 licensing...

shabaz — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:07:46 GMT

It's spam prep (same user tried it earlier today) copying a comment into a very old thread.

RE: Eagle v8 licensing...

cstanton — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 13:02:56 GMT

It's not great, I agree.

RE: Eagle v8 licensing...

1470aries — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 12:26:21 GMT

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-EAGLE-Announcement-Next-steps-and-FAQ.html
Gees... what happened? Yep, Servers will be turned off.
No offering it as a FREE standalone, of 2 or 4 layer board up to 300 mm x 300 mm or what ever size, since people would have already paid for larger than 100 mm2.

Common, let's see, are you able to at least let the hobbyists have a final hurrah?

Thank you for the memories Eagle Cad.

RE: Eagle v8 licensing...

1470aries — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 12:06:43 GMT

[quote userid="61596" url="~/products/eagle/f/eagle-user-chat-english/7100/eagle-v8-licensing"]Point is, that's a pretty remote possibility (think: time travel and alien invasions) and it wouldn't benefit us *at all* to upset the users we just spent real money hoping to bring into autodesk and earn their business. As the guy with both development and P&L for the product, I can tell you that it's counterintuitive and wouldn't benefit us at all[/quote]

RE: Double Sided Multi-Layer PCB

UsmanAgani — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 10:43:49 GMT

Do you have any suggest link or website of tutorial hou to make more layers?

Double Sided Multi-Layer PCB

Former Member — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:57:59 GMT

Hey,

Im currently working with a team that is attempting to build a nanosatellite. We are debating between orcad and Eagle for PCB Designing. I need to know if eagle is capable of designing a double sided pcb(components on both sides) , with upto 6-10 Layers.

Thanks in advance :-).

RE: Is there a user written ULP sharing repository?

qzic — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 13:18:16 GMT

Yes, i found that and it's nicely organized but it's a personal blog. I was thinking of a public forum, hosted by say, Eagle, or element14 where users could submit their most useful ulps. Maybe I'll just send my ulp to Rachel for now.