Whats happening with EagleCad & Cadsoft?

Hallo Dave,

some of the things that you mentioned are already possible in current

EAGLE versions, even if not immediately from scratch:

Am 23.07.2011 09:54, schrieb davem:

Q8) Any plans for built in Circuit Simulation ( even basic stuff)?

Circuit simulation can be done with an external simulator and some

dedicated ULP. We are using LTSpice at the moment (aka SwitcherCAD),

which works well under Windows and Linux (together with Wine). With a

little bit of luck, I get to know TODAY whether LTSpice can also be used

together with a Mac. The self-made ULP 'spice' connects the symbol pins

from the schematic to the corresponding SPICE models, lets the user

choose settings and runs LTSpice. Connecting to unknown models can be

done with adding simulator commands as device attributes.

Drawbacks: No crossprobing possible, because LTSpice and EAGLE are

separate programs. Models need to be downloaded from the IC manufacturer

and connected 'manually' (this is a problem of license restrictions

introduced by many IC manufacturers, which explicitely forbid the

spreading of their models - whyever).

Q9) Any plans for The Built in text editor to have its own Syntax

Highlighting etc?

The possibility to use an EXTERNAL editor is quite good: CadSoft can

never hope to produce a text editor that is as good as some external

tools. For Windows, the (very old) Crimson Editor and the (current)

Notepad++ make writing ULPs a breeze. I don't know text editors for

other OSs, but perhaps the above also work using Wine.

Q14) Can we have single keystroke functions for at lease basic items, Move,

Change Layer, etc ( user definable of course).

You can already put the 'move' command to, e.g., CTRL+M and define key

combinations for lots of other commands as well. Unfortunately, such key

combinations are not predefined by CadSoft (they are mainly using

function keys). If with 'single keystroke' you mean pressing just ONE

key (and NOT a key combination), this doesn't work (but for the funtion

keys) due to the command line (which is TOO useful to be abandoned).

There were several suggestions concerning changing the behaviour of the

command line, though.

I am concerned that I may get to the stage of

writing very useful ULP's and then Cadsoft will release something in the

near future that replaces my work.

As for the BOM, everybody wants a completely different one, so you

should (with some efforts) create your own with a ULP. What can NOT be

done properly ULP-wise are things like hierarchical schematics, changing

pads in the BOARD, arbitrary pad shapes in libraries, etc. some of which

will apparently be addressed in the next EAGLE version (thanks for the

info, Mr. Schmidinger).

Andreas Weidner

HI,

Thanks for the reply Andreas,

I have worked in PCB Assembly Business for several years ( quite some time

ago) and I can tell you that MOST Bill OF Materials ARE ESSENTIALLY THE

SAME, from the single engineer to large corporations like Netcomm, Nortel,

Cisco , Apple etc, I have managed documentation for all types of

companies.

The only major difference I see in BOMs between small operators and Large

Corprations is an approved supplier/ approved manufacturers list.

So bom's generally consists of the following fields..

Line

Company Part Number          (optional )

Qty

Designators                  (grouped together)

Description                  (A full description)

Revision                     (Optional)

Manufacturer's Name          (A list of Approved manufacturers)

Manufactures Part Number     (A list of Approved part no's)

Vendor ( Supplier )          (A list of Approved vendors)

Cost                         (Costs are needed but these are not usually

passed on)

The desciption will usually have all the info, such as ic number,

footprint, voltage, material type, current rating. enough to make a good

decision even without the manufacturers part number.

i.e RESISTOR THICK FILM 500mW 200V SMD 1206 1% 5K6

Large corporations will only allow you to purchase from approved

manufacturers and vendors, both due to testing/quality approvals and supply

chain deals. They will usually list more than one option and will give an

order of preference.

Large corporations will also have their OWN PART NUMBERS which would appear

on a BOM As well.

At the end of the day, I don't see why there are so many types of BOM

formats! ,  they are all essentially the same ( the order of fields may be

different, give or take a few fields.

What is different is the way they are received into a business, from plain

text to spreadsheets (back in my day), and now probably integrated with

databases but I doubt it.

What I am trying to say that CADSOFT could come up with a BOM SYSTEM that

would suit 99 percent of everyones needs. Saying that, and just to keep

everyone happy, it would still be needed to be able to configure the

format. We could choose the fields and the order of them in a user

preference window so its used system wide.

I know we can use attributes??, but this FORCES everyone into making

different set ups so nothing is shared or compatible. thats why we have so

many ULPS for BOMS.

There is no reason that we can't have a built in window that displays a BOM

that is kept in "sync" just like the Schematic & Board windows, it would be

a third button next to the schematic and layout buttons.

I believe the main issue is that CAD Programs Like Eagle cad or any other,

rely mostly on Generic parts in the library. i.e RESISTOR 0805 10K, as far

as both the schematic and board layout windows are concerned.

but that shouldn't be a problem, when you first open the BOM Window you

will just see, the qty , designators (grouped), the footprint and the value

( in this case 10K) , Then the main task of the BOM Window is to ASSIGN

REAL COMPONENTS (Manufactures part numbers) so we know exactly what to

use/purchase etc.

When you have worked them out, It sort of gives you a TO DO LIST as far as

assignment of components. This then completes the BOM. Then at anytime, you

can view this with just one click and no configuration.( after set up in

our user preferences). From this window you can print it out ( On Paper or

PDF ) Or you can export to Spreadsheet or text file.

I would like a link to SQL someway so the library and schematics can access

business databases in both directions.

There is no reason that you could not have your own part numbers in the

library. ( a variant of a variant???) eg lets say we have an 0805 resistor,

this would normally be just one part in the eaglecad library, but you may

create a list of all the resistor values you have ever used i.e say 50

different values. So thats why we would need a proper PART NUMBER FIELD as

part of the LIBRARY BOM System.

You would only need to add these parts as you "ASSIGN the PARTS in the

BOM)

Currently we only have variants which are basically different footprints,

So I can't see that there is a solution for individual parts. i.e 10k, 5k

etc within the library system.

I have been thinking long and hard about this issue and I have many ideas.

If I get some time I can make some graphic examples of what I mean. showing

the user preferences window, sample bom layout window and most important

the DATA STRUCTURE of how parts info and library info could be managed.

Thanks

Dave M

PS I hope I made some sense??

--

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

Hello Dave,

Am 26.07.2011 11:58, schrieb davem:

I have worked in PCB Assembly Business for several years ( quite some time

ago) and I can tell you that MOST Bill OF Materials ARE ESSENTIALLY THE

SAME, from the single engineer to large corporations like Netcomm, Nortel,

Cisco , Apple etc, I have managed documentation for all types of

companies

Thanks for your thoughts. As a matter of fact, since several weeks, I'm

thinking about writing a ULP for a BOM also, which would be integrated

in our documentation system here (and which therefore needs to output

'LaTeX' code for our PDF documentation). Whether or not a BOM will be

implemented by CadSoft, I will surely take your ideas into account when

programming MY program doing that (most of your points I already wanted

to implement anyway, but there are additional ones that I missed before).

I believe the main issue is that CAD Programs Like Eagle cad or any other,

rely mostly on Generic parts in the library. i.e RESISTOR 0805 10K, as far

as both the schematic and board layout windows are concerned.

The main problem is that in order to automatically create a BOM, one

cannot just look at a device/package pair, but MUST also look at the

VALUE and should therefore be able to INTERPRET this:

0.1u=0,1µ=100n=.1uF or 1200R=1,2k=1K2=1.2k etc. Having to add

manufacturer codes to ALL parts in ALL projects is cumbersome at best,

so SOME sort of database for looking up default parts is necessary.

Currently we only have variants which are basically different footprints,

So I can't see that there is a solution for individual parts. i.e 10k, 5k

etc within the library system.

Yes. Works only with a database somewhere.

With best regards,

Andreas Weidner

davem wrote on Tue, 26 July 2011 05:57

So bom's generally consists of the following fields..

 

 

Line

Company Part Number          (optional )

Qty

Designators                  (grouped together)

Description                  (A full description)

Revision                     (Optional)

Manufacturer's Name          (A list of Approved manufacturers)

Manufactures Part Number     (A list of Approved part no's)

Vendor ( Supplier )          (A list of Approved vendors)

 

Cost                         (Costs are needed but these are not

usually passed on)

I break up your description into three separate fields: general

description, value, and package.  For example, a simple resistor might be

  Description: Resistor, fixed

  Value: 5.1k

  Package: 0805Quote:

What I am trying to say that CADSOFT could come up with a BOM SYSTEM

that would suit 99 percent of everyones needs.

There are way too many little wrinkles for that, especially if you already

have a system in place that anything new needs to be compatible with.

If you really think this is true, then why not use my BOM system?  It's

freely available in my Eagle Tools release at

http://www.embedinc.com/pic/dload.htm.  This is a collection of ULPs,

scripts, and external programs that take the information from a schematic

or board ready to import into a spreadsheet.  A set of Eagle attributes are

used that have special meaning to the BOM system.  Most of the parts in the

libraries that are included in the Eagle Tools release already have the

attributes set appropriately.  You can look at the header description of my

BOM.ULP and follow the documentation cookie crumbs from there to understand

the whole BOM system.  The description of the attributes is in the

EAGLE_ATTR documentation file:

This document describes the Embed Inc conventions for using optional

attributes in Eagle, which were first made available in version 5.  In

previous versions a part could only have a few fixed attributes built into

Eagle, such as VALUE and NAME.  In version 5 these fixed attributes still

exist but arbitrary additional attributes can be created by the user.

This document specifies certain attributes that are expected by parts of

the Embed Inc system, mostly to aid in automatic bill of materials (BOM)

generation.  The process of generating a BOM from a eagle board or

schematic is desribed in the CSV_BOM program documentation file.

The Eagle optional attributes that have special meaning within the Embed

Inc

system are:

MANUF

    Manufacturer:partnum; manufacturer:partnum; ...

    The PARTNUM fields and their leading colons may be omitted, but is a

    bad idea unless only a single manufacturer is listed.

PARTNUM

    Generic part number or part number within single manufacturer.

SUPPLIER

    Supplier:partnum; supplier:partnum; ...

    The PARTNUM fields and their leading colons may be omitted, but is a

    bad idea unless only a single supplier is listed.

BOM

    Whether this part should be included on the BOM.  Some "parts" are

    only features on the board, like pogo pin pads for example.  These

    should not be listed on the BOM because they do not need to be bought

    and will not be installed.  Supported values are:

      YES  -  Include this part in the BOM.

      NO  -  Do not include this part in the BOM.

    The default is YES if BOM is empty or does not exist.

VALSTAT

    Indicates how the VALUE attribute is used.  The choices are:

      VAL  -  Normal part value, like the resistance of a resistor.  The

        part value will be listed on the BOM and used to distinguish

        different parts.  For example, a 10K ohm resistor is a different

        part than a 330 ohm resistor.

      PARTNUM  -  The part number.  The value field will be shown in the

        BOM and used to distinguish different parts, like VAL.  However,

        the part number field will be set to VALUE unless the part number

        is otherwise explicitly set.  VALSTAT PARTNUM is for generic

        library devices where the value field is used to show some or all

        of the part number on the schematic.  For example, the library

        might contain a generic 14 pin opamp device, and the value set to

        LM324 to show the type of opamp on the schematic.  In this

        example, VALUE is only set to the generic part number without

        package type, temperature grade, etc.  In this case the PARTNUM

        attribute should be used to specify the exact part number, but

        VALSTAT should still be set to PARTNUM.

      LABEL  -  Label intended for the silkscreen.  The value field will

        not be transferred to the BOM and will not be used to

        differentiate parts.  This might be used, for example, to label a

        LED on the board.  Different LEDs might be labeled "Power" and

        "Error", but they are the same physical part and should be listed

        on the same BOM entry.

SUBST

    Sets the substutions allowed field for the part on the BOM.  Valid

    values are "YES" and "NO".  The default is YES if SUBST does not exist

    or is empty.

DVAL

    Detailed part value.  If present and not empty, this field overrides

    the part value string on the BOM and will be used to differentiate

    parts.  DVAL is always assumed to be the true part value, so is not

    effected by VALSTAT.  The purpose of DVAL is to provide more

    information than reasonable to show on the schematic.  Generally the

    standard VALUE attribute will be shown on the schematic with DVAL

    shown on the BOM.

DESC

    Explicit description string for the BOM.  By default, the BOM

    description is derived from the library name and the device name

    within that library.  If the DESC attribute is present and not empty,

    its contents will override that default.

--

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

Olin wrote on Tue, 26 July 2011 22:54

If you really think this is true, then why not use my BOM system?  It's

freely available in my Eagle Tools release at

http://www.embedinc.com/pic/dload.htm.

Hi Olin,,

Because its for PC Only,I use a Mac, If you just have a folder of files to

download instead of an .exe to extract the files, then I could probably

take advantage of your kind offer, I would love to have a look at what you

have done!

Thanks

Dave M

--

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

On 07/26/2011 08:54 AM, Olin Lathrop wrote:

davem wrote on Tue, 26 July 2011 05:57

>> So bom's generally consists of the following fields..

>>

>>

>> Line

>> Company Part Number          (optional )

>> Qty

>> Designators                  (grouped together)

>> Description                  (A full description)

>> Revision                     (Optional)

>> Manufacturer's Name          (A list of Approved manufacturers)

>> Manufactures Part Number     (A list of Approved part no's)

>> Vendor ( Supplier )          (A list of Approved vendors)

>>

>> Cost                         (Costs are needed but these are not

>> usually passed on)

I break up your description into three separate fields: general

description, value, and package.  For example, a simple resistor might be

  Description: Resistor, fixed

  Value: 5.1k

  Package: 0805

I break it down even further:

Description

Value

Tolerance

Rating

Material

Polarity

Each of these is an attribute maintained in a table separate from the

part, and linked by a part ID number.  This way, I can have different

attributes for different components.  R's have a rating measured in

watts and sometimes volts.  C's are measured in volts.  L's are measured

in amps.  BJT's are measured in watts.  Material for R's might be 'thick

film', 'thin film', 'silicone',or 'carbon comp'.  Material for C's might

be 'X7R', 'NP0', etc.  Material for L's might be 'air core', 'iron

core'.  IC's probably wouldn't have a material.  Transistors might have

their Polarity set to 'PNP', or 'N-chan'.

It essentially parallels the ATTRIBUTES feature of v 5.0, although my

external DB was established long before 5.0.

These can easily be expanded to include design specific attributes such

as minimum hFE, maximum Rdson, or gate threshold voltage allowing a BOM

program to search for approved parts with those parameters.

One additional note regarding the desire for eagle to NOT have a fixed

BOM system:  By using a BOM system external to eagle, other individuals

can access the BOM without having to install eagle.  This also is able

to integrate to an MRP (Material Resource Planning) system.

Enjoy,

    - Chuck

Hello Olin,

Is there any chance to get your Eagle tools again? The download link on your website is unable to access.

Hello Olin,

Is there any chance to get your Eagle tools again? The download link on your website is unable to access.

You have replied to a six year old thread about a product that doesn't really exist any more - Eagle belongs to Autodesk and they are the people you need to ask about this.

Start a new thread if you want to talk about Eagle.

MK