PCB Layer Color Options

It seems very stange to me that Cadsoft has developed a fantastic program,

with milion lines of code, and yet they don't have time to define 16 colors

that looks nice in alpha blending.

I could do soming about it, but it would probably take a few days to

understand how to select colors that are distinct and blend in a way that

is easy to understand.

Has anybody made a palette that they are willing to share?

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It seems very stange to me that Cadsoft has developed a fantastic program,

with milion lines of code, and yet they don't have time to define 16 colors

that looks nice in alpha blending.

I could do soming about it, but it would probably take a few days to

understand how to select colors that are distinct and blend in a way that

is easy to understand.

Has anybody made a palette that they are willing to share?

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Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.

On 10/10/2011 8:45 AM, Gustav wrote:

It seems very stange to me that Cadsoft has developed a fantastic program,

with milion lines of code, and yet they don't have time to define 16 colors

that looks nice in alpha blending.

 

I could do soming about it, but it would probably take a few days to

understand how to select colors that are distinct and blend in a way that

is easy to understand.

 

Has anybody made a palette that they are willing to share?

www.cadsoftusa.com-> Downloads-> Tools and Converters. Newcolors.scr

Should give you an idea, you'll have to tack on the alpha blend on the

front, since in version 4 we didn't have alpha blend the colors were

defined as RGB, for version 5 and on the color format is ARGB.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

If I make a custom palette to put in a script - where can I find where the values are stored?

That way I can distribute the script with the file and people will have to run it to insure that they see my custom colors.

I do agree with the comment above about the palette lacking a lot. I'll be happy to design a better one for CadSoft.

In the meantime, isn't it time that this information be included in a board file, so that it's not an issue. As I see it, it would increase the

file size 64*4bytes (RGBA) plus a little overhead for a header, 300 bytes total? Which is effectively nothing in today's large file sizes.

Then we wouldn't be worrying about a script - we could just put all the information in a template, load the template and create the new design.

If the palette got modded for any reason, it would go with the file.

Am 29.03.2014 20:12, schrieb Paul Badger:

If I make a custom palette to put in a script - where can I find where

the values are stored?

That way I can distribute the script with the file and people will have

to run it to insure that they see my custom colors.

 

I do agree with the comment about the palette above lacking in

useability. I'll be happy to design a better one for CadSoft.

 

In the meantime, isn't it time that this information be included in a

board file, so that it's not an issue. As I see it, it would increase

the

file size 64*4bytes (RGBA) plus a little overhead for a header, 300

bytes total? Which is effectively nothing in today's large file sizes.

 

Then we wouldn't be worrying about a script - we could just put all the

information in a template, load the template and create the new design.

If the palette got modded for any reason, it would go with the file.

 

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Eaglerc.usr palette.0.xx, 1.xx, 2.xx for white, black and coloured

backgrounds

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen / With best regards

Joern Paschedag

Joern,

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm on a Mac and have dug around a bit and not found eaglerc  or Eaglerc. I even dug through the package. Can you give me a hint about where I might find the file? Is it invisible? I did search for dot file too. There was a discussion of using -U to trigger the use of this file, but I couldn't figure out the context. Everyone seemed to be on PC's.

Paul

Hi,

the file is named  .eaglerc   and is in your home folder. The dot in the beginning marks it as a hidden file on the Mac system. Try to find it with a Terminal windows, for example with the  ls -la  command.

HTH

Regards,

Richard

Thank Richard,

I found it and found the palette. I can't explain why I didn't find it after specifically searching for invisible files. Mysteries of Apple spotlight I guess.

It should be easy to grab the info I need for a script. It would also be easy to create a load and save palette ULPs but IMO these kind of things belong in the interface. If you haven't guessed, I'd like to add my vote for putting this into the next version of Eagle as well as saving palette's in board files.

My Kudos for the extensive scripting system for Eagle. However it would be nice to see you take some of the best of the ideas your customers have cooked up and put them into menu items. The interface is still very bare bones compared with competitors. And FWIW I'm not using the free version of Eagle so I added my $vote.

Gustav wrote on Mon, 10 October 2011 08:45

It seems very stange to me that Cadsoft has developed a fantastic

program, with milion lines of code, and yet they don't have time to

define 16 colors that looks nice in alpha blending.

 

I could do soming about it, but it would probably take a few days to

understand how to select colors that are distinct and blend in a way that

is easy to understand.

 

Has anybody made a palette that they are willing to share?

I totally agree Gustav.  The whole alpha-blending engine is essentially

crippled to be non-useful because no one put any thought into palette

support--a relatively small and trivial element of the system.

While we're discussing it, the way the alpha value is handled is crazy as

well.  Each colour specified in your palette has an alpha value

associated with it.  And then you assign that colour (or more specifically

the index in your palette) to various layers in the design.

That means that the alpha value of each layer is FIXED.

The whole point of having an alpha value for transparency is to be able to

highlight one set of objects with respect to other objects so that some

objects stand out from others.  So that could be objects on one layer

versus all others (handy during manual routing).  But you might want to

highlight a subset of signals versus all the others.  Or maybe types of

objects (polygons, text, ....).

EAGLE needs to revamp the entire handling of colours so that each layer is

given a colour (but no alpha value).  Then the alpha value is assigned to a

subset of objects that can be selected based on any of its internal

parameters:  name, layer, type, size, .....  And in the ability to NOT

display the various types of objects (for instance polygons on a power

plane).

To get around all of this, I wrote a ULP that dynamically changes the

entire palette in order that I can highlight a single layer when routing.

I then assign it to a set of keys so I don't need to use the mouse to do

any of this.  So if I have a board with 6 routing layers then I can use

CMDSHIFTF2 and layer 2 has its alpha value increased so that it is more

prominent than the other layers.  Activating CMDSHIFTF2 again would

return the alpha value to the standard value.  You can increase the alpha

value of any subset of layers using those key sequences.   Way faster than

using the GUI (because to do this you would have to go and edit the

palette).  It is limited but it works OK.  But rewriting the entire palette

to simply make layer 2 more visible relative to layer 1 seems like the

wrong way to go about doing this.

But the point is there is a really great alpha-blending engine that is

almost entirely unused.  With a bit of planning it could really be a

helpful addition to EAGLE.

Hopefully in V7, but from Jorge's comments it doesn't seem like we should

hold our breath.

James.

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James Morrison  ~~~  Stratford Digital

Specializing in CadSoft EAGLE

• Online Sales to North America

• Electronic Design Services

• EAGLE Enterprise Toolkit

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