How to create library part with thermal pad?

Well Mr Pearce,

as much as I thank you for your help, I must admit that I am not as

knowledgeable using Eagle as you might have thought I was. That is why I

didn't understand (and still don't) why there are supposed to be holes in

the tStop layer, what they do, nor how come it is one of the only two

layers that are generated automaticall for a SMD pad. there might be

something (or more than one thing) that I don't understand, that's obvious,

but if I did know, then I obviously wouldn't be posting on this forum, eh?

So, no need to insinuate something by saying that I need less syllables in

order to understand, or telling me to read the help file when I don't even

know specifically what to look for... It is hard to know what to look for

when you think you've looked at everything you could think of, and then

there's the things one doesn't think of...

In any case your explanation did help me out. I shall try this polygon

perimeter-delimitation method with the tRestrict layer.

sincerely,

Redcutlass

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Redcutlass wrote on Wed, 30 March 2011 12:29

That is why I didn't understand (and still don't) why there are

supposed to be holes in the tStop layer, what they do, nor how come it is

one of the only two layers that are generated automaticall for a SMD pad.

It seems now the real problem is not as much your understanding of Eagle,

but that you don't understand how PC boards work and how they are made.  If

you did, it would be intuitive how some of the Eagle layers map to layers

of a PCB.

Briefly, a PCB can the thought of as a sandwich of layers.  For simple

double sided boards from top to bottom these are the top silkscreen, top

soldermask, top copper, the PCB material itself (usually FR4 fiberglass),

bottom copper, and bottom soldermask.  You might also have a bottom

silkscreen for a more complicated board.

Go read up on PCB construction, then how the Eagle layers map to that will

make sense.

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Olin wrote on Thu, 31 March 2011 07:27

It seems now the real problem is not as much your understanding of

Eagle, but that you don't understand how PC boards work and how they are

made.  If you did, it would be intuitive how some of the Eagle layers map

to layers of a PCB.

 

Briefly, a PCB can the thought of as a sandwich of layers.  For simple

double sided boards from top to bottom these are the top silkscreen, top

soldermask, top copper, the PCB material itself (usually FR4 fiberglass),

bottom copper, and bottom soldermask.  You might also have a bottom

silkscreen for a more complicated board.

 

Go read up on PCB construction, then how the Eagle layers map to that

will make sense.

euh, no. I am quite aware of how a PC board is made, be it single

double-sided, or multi-layered. I know what the solder mask does and what

delimitation it is supposed to have around the components. This is not my

first succesfully-manufactured board I've designed...

Funny enough,I asked a co-worker if he would refer to the Stop layer (he

doesn't use Eagle) as having "holes" in it, and he looked at me with

question marks in his eyes..

He then suggested that maybe the person who said that meant "openings"...

Then suddenly it all made sense.

You see, it isn't a question of my lack of knowledge, it is a question

using the correct word to describe the Stop layer. when I read holes I

thought to myself: round small openings. That's a hole. Not, "a perimetric

delimitation around an area", which opening would have suggested.

I was hoping not to have to defend myself in such a manner but it seems as

though people would rather assume that I lack knowledge.

anyway, another reader on another related topic has found a solution. I

shall go try that out now.

anyways, thanks for your replies, I hope I don't come off as too defensive.

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On 3/31/2011 7:55 AM, Owen wrote:

Olin wrote on Thu, 31 March 2011 07:27

>> It seems now the real problem is not as much your understanding of

>> Eagle, but that you don't understand how PC boards work and how they are

>> made.  If you did, it would be intuitive how some of the Eagle layers map

>> to layers of a PCB.

>>

>> Briefly, a PCB can the thought of as a sandwich of layers.  For simple

>> double sided boards from top to bottom these are the top silkscreen, top

>> soldermask, top copper, the PCB material itself (usually FR4 fiberglass),

>> bottom copper, and bottom soldermask.  You might also have a bottom

>> silkscreen for a more complicated board.

>>

>> Go read up on PCB construction, then how the Eagle layers map to that

>> will make sense.

>

euh, no. I am quite aware of how a PC board is made, be it single

double-sided, or multi-layered. I know what the solder mask does and what

delimitation it is supposed to have around the components. This is not my

first succesfully-manufactured board I've designed...

Funny enough,I asked a co-worker if he would refer to the Stop layer (he

doesn't use Eagle) as having "holes" in it, and he looked at me with

question marks in his eyes..

 

He then suggested that maybe the person who said that meant "openings"...

Then suddenly it all made sense.

 

You see, it isn't a question of my lack of knowledge, it is a question

using the correct word to describe the Stop layer. when I read holes I

thought to myself: round small openings. That's a hole. Not, "a perimetric

delimitation around an area", which opening would have suggested.

 

I was hoping not to have to defend myself in such a manner but it seems as

though people would rather assume that I lack knowledge.

 

anyway, another reader on another related topic has found a solution. I

shall go try that out now.

 

anyways, thanks for your replies, I hope I don't come off as too defensive.

The people who write the EAGLE software do not have american english as

a first language, some of the terms in EAGLE's english are not clear.

solder-stop is another name for solder-mask and the stop in tStop refers

to this.

There are a lot of cases where you have to be flexible in your

interpretation of EAGLE's terms.  For backward compatibility with

scripts and ULP's, the historic, perhaps misleading, terms are here to stay.

Gary Gofstein wrote on Thu, 31 March 2011 16:19

There are a lot of cases where you have to be flexible in your

interpretation of EAGLE's terms.  For backward compatibility with

scripts and ULP's, the historic, perhaps misleading, terms are here to

stay.

When I first started learning Eagle the poor choice of command names caused

considerable confusion.  For example, CUT does a COPY, and COPY never seems

to do what you want.  WIRE draws lines except when they represent wires,

then you use NET.

It is pretty universally understood that CUT does a copy and delete.  This

was well established before Eagle was written.  It is totally beyond me

what Klaus and company were thinking when they named the copy command

"cut".

Another annoying "feature" that is due to Eagle's origin is that vertical

text reads up not down.  That is the german convention.  However, I am

using the english language version, and judging from the number of

downloads and the activity in this forum, the english language version is

much more popular.  Is this ever going to get fixed?  It's been reported

as a problem long ago.  At the very least there should be a setting for

default vertical text direction.  Currently this is a outright bug in the

english language version, but Cadsoft doesn't seem to take is seriously

because it looks right in the version they use.

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I did not think about that... the famous language barrier. However the

level of english spoken on the forum, I find, is of higher quality than

other forums I visit.

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ain't that true. I'm not surprised to see that other (non-german) members

find this weird. But once you know it... lol

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Olin Lathrop wrote:

Another annoying "feature" that is due to Eagle's origin is that

vertical text reads up not down.  That is the german convention.

However, I am using the english language version, and judging from

the number of downloads and the activity in this forum, the english

language version is much more popular.  Is this ever going to get

fixed?  It's been reported as a problem long ago.  At the very least

there should be a setting for default vertical text direction.

Currently this is a outright bug in the english language version, but

Cadsoft doesn't seem to take is seriously because it looks right in

the version they use.

Off subject apologies.

I had not previously known of this  'text reads down' preferrence and agree

that if a significant portion of the market desires it then it should be

catered for.

I don't see the default as a German convention. 'text reads up' is my

preferrence as rotating the document clockwise (right) is my preference.

Are you saying the North American convention is to read a document from the

bottom or the left.

Cheers

Warren

warrenbrayshaw wrote on Fri, 01 April 2011 15:46

Are you saying the North American convention is to read a document from

the bottom or the left.

I don't think of it as reading a document from a particular side.  However,

pretty universally when you see vertical text here it is written going

down, not up.  This applies to signs, the spines of books, and just about

everything else.  Vertical text going up looks stupid, at least here.

For example, if you look at a german bookcase the titles will read up, but

here they will read down.

All this has been pointed out to Cadsoft before.  They don't seem to care.

They really should enhance text placement in general.  Eagle is workable

but very primitive in that regard.  Most software that lets you graphically

place text allows you to chose the anchor from one of the 9 corners, center

of edges, and center.  After that should be choice of direction, with

something better than the rather awkward "spin" flag to fix things.

I actually wrote a ULP that looks for vertical text strings.  It sets the

spin flag, orientation, and moves the origin around so that the text reads

down instead of up in the same place.  It mostly works, but it does move

the text around a little bit.

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On 04/01/11 14:58, Olin Lathrop wrote:

...

It is pretty universally understood that CUT does a copy and delete.  This

was well established before Eagle was written.  It is totally beyond me

what Klaus and company were thinking when they named the copy command

"cut".

The user interface of EAGLE was inspired by the "Valid GED", a graphical

editor I was working with during my time at Siemens. In that editor the

COPY command worked in such a way that you select the command and then

click on the object you want to copy. Then you move the copy to the

desired target location and click again to place it.

The CUT command in the GED did only copy the selected group into

the "cutting" buffer for later use with PASTE. It did not delete

the group from the original drawing.

Well, I'm sorry I got into contact with the GED before I was "contaminated"

with Windows, but that's the reason why COPY and CUT behave as they do

in EAGLE.

To get this recurring discussion over with once and for all I suggest

the following changes for version 6:

- The COPY command, when activated, just copies the group into

   the buffer and terminates immediately. It will no longer be able to

   select individual objects for copying. To copy individual objects

   you will have to draw a group around each object, do a COPY and then

   a PASTE. Unlike the former CUT command, which allowed the user to

   define a reference point to "cut" the group at a particular location,

   at which it will be attached to the mouse cursor when doing a later

   PASTE, there will be no such reference point in the COPY command

   (as usual under Windows, the group will be selected at its center).

- The CUT command becomes a combination of COPY, followed by a DELETE

   of the group. Since board and schematic

   are connected via forward&backannotation, some limitations apply

   to the DELETE command (as is already the case now). Therefore it

   may not be possible to actually delete the entire group. In such a case,

   the group that has been copied into the buffer may contain objects

   that have not been deleted from the drawing. Also, when doing a CUT

   in the schematic, the group that gets copied into the buffer will

   contain only the objects from the schematic, while the DELETE will

   also delete the related objects from the board.

   Alternatively (and since it most likely would cause quite some

   confusion in boards and schematics) the CUT command could be

   removed entirely.

- The PASTE command remains unchanged.

These changes should make EAGLE's COPY/CUT mechanism as "Windows like"

as possible. Whether this behavior is actually useful, is another

question...

Klaus Schmidinger

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_______________________________________________________________

Klaus Schmidinger                       Phone: +49-8635-6989-10

CadSoft Computer GmbH                   Fax:   +49-8635-6989-40

Pleidolfweg 15                          Email:   kls@cadsoft.de

D-84568 Pleiskirchen, Germany           URL:     www.cadsoft.de

_______________________________________________________________

Klaus Schmidinger schrieb:

To get this recurring discussion over with once and for all I suggest

the following changes for version 6:

 

- The COPY command, when activated, just copies the group into

   the buffer and terminates immediately. It will no longer be able to

   select individual objects for copying.

That would be a great disadvantage. I often use COPY on single objects.

It wouldn't be any problem to keep that (with use of the LMB), IMHO -

even if the function for dealing with groups was changed as described above.

   To copy individual objects

   you will have to draw a group around each object, do a COPY and then

   a PASTE.

Horrible.

   Unlike the former CUT command, which allowed the user to

   define a reference point to "cut" the group at a particular location,

   at which it will be attached to the mouse cursor when doing a later

   PASTE, there will be no such reference point in the COPY command

   (as usual under Windows, the group will be selected at its center).

...so you'll run into many grid problems. Selecting the reference point

is a very essential feature of the (current) CUT command.

These changes should make EAGLE's COPY/CUT mechanism as "Windows like"

as possible. Whether this behavior is actually useful, is another

question...

Exactly. I hereby request YAES (yet another eaglerc.usr switch) to

restore the current behaviour.

(Additionally, what about scripts that use the old command syntax?)

Tilmann

P.S. Yes, you have to learn the different command behaviour compared to

windows standard. Yes, you also need to get used to it. But after all,

EAGLE is a complex and powerful design tool - and in the current

implementation, you get the maximum /working efficiency/, and that's

what counts. The need to learn the tools is common for all complex ones.

Perhaps you just need to /rename/ the existing commands to avoid (or

reduce) the windows users confusion? (Script handling should still be

considered, however.)

Klaus Schmidinger schrieb:

To get this recurring discussion over with once and for all I suggest

the following changes for version 6:

 

- The COPY command, when activated, just copies the group into

   the buffer and terminates immediately. It will no longer be able to

   select individual objects for copying.

That would be a great disadvantage. I often use COPY on single objects.

It wouldn't be any problem to keep that (with use of the LMB), IMHO -

even if the function for dealing with groups was changed as described above.

   To copy individual objects

   you will have to draw a group around each object, do a COPY and then

   a PASTE.

Horrible.

   Unlike the former CUT command, which allowed the user to

   define a reference point to "cut" the group at a particular location,

   at which it will be attached to the mouse cursor when doing a later

   PASTE, there will be no such reference point in the COPY command

   (as usual under Windows, the group will be selected at its center).

...so you'll run into many grid problems. Selecting the reference point

is a very essential feature of the (current) CUT command.

These changes should make EAGLE's COPY/CUT mechanism as "Windows like"

as possible. Whether this behavior is actually useful, is another

question...

Exactly. I hereby request YAES (yet another eaglerc.usr switch) to

restore the current behaviour.

(Additionally, what about scripts that use the old command syntax?)

Tilmann

P.S. Yes, you have to learn the different command behaviour compared to

windows standard. Yes, you also need to get used to it. But after all,

EAGLE is a complex and powerful design tool - and in the current

implementation, you get the maximum /working efficiency/, and that's

what counts. The need to learn the tools is common for all complex ones.

Perhaps you just need to /rename/ the existing commands to avoid (or

reduce) the windows users confusion? (Script handling should still be

considered, however.)