Eagle 7 Hierarchical Design - REPLICATING LAYOUT BLOCKS

On 7/22/2014 12:52 PM, Jacob Skinner wrote:

Hi All,

 

I have recently started using EagleCAD V7, as many will have. I was

delighted to read that hierarchical design would be available E7. Why

this wasn't already available is a joke, but there we go. The trouble is

that is seems that this only applies to the schematic diagram. It is

very likely that I am missing something, but I can not find a way to

replicate both schematic AND layer designs in one go. Great, I can

replicate 10 pre-amplifier schematic blocks, but they all land in the

layout editor as the familiar jumble of un-routed mess that we all love

to get stuck into routing. Trouble is, I run a business and haven't got

time to route the same thing 10 times!

 

Any ideas out there feeding into this would be appreciated. Preferably

one that solves the problem!

 

Jacob

 

(PS - Yes, Im sorry, I originally posted this in the blog section. This

site is not very easy to navigate and it was hard to find the correct

place to post... )

 

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Hello Jacob,

In this case I would design 1 pre-amplifier as it's own schematic/board

pair. Once one amplifier has been completely laid and your happy with

it, save the design.

Start a new schematic/board pair. In the new blank design, click File ->

Import -> EAGLE Drawing... Select the design you completed previously

and click OK. A dialog will pop up showing you how nets will be renamed

and will allow you to control that process. Click OK.

The design will be imported with layout and everything. Repeat this for

as many copies as you need. You can import the design into itself as

well so the number of copies will grow proportional to 2^n, where n is

the number of times you import the design into itself.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

Jorge,

Many thanks for taking time to answer.

I have tried your method and indeed this is a big step in the right direction. However, I see one significant issue and that is that imported blocks are added, but then essentially become just another part of the main design, such that a change in one of the imported blocks will not be reflected in the others, (or a change in the original will not feed through to the others).

Example : I decide to change from a capacitor from 0805 to 0603. I will need to do this 10 times and the results after eyeballing and changing the component 10 times will yield slightly different placements for each. Maybe not the end of the world in this example, but if I want to make a change that becomes apparent only after importing and evolving the design, I am stuck with having to essentially go back, delete and import 10 times (n2 reduced). It all seems a bit flakey and for a CAD program of 25 years history it feels like the investment in evolving these important features is lacking.

I would suggest that the best way for this to work seamlessly would for it to be part of the hierarchical design methodology, as I had assumed it would be in the hype leading up to V7. Being able to import a block of schematic AND layout into a MODULE with the layout intact, would allow replication from a common and singular base circuit for the 10 channels of my pre-amplifier example. Additionally 'de-tethering' blocks from this framework would be the iceing on the cake, whereby maybe one of the 10 blocks might end up needing a slight modification and could be turned into 'hard coded' schematic at will from the MODULE instance if was generated from.

I guess this is a feature I should describe to those coding the next version of Eagle. I'm not sure I will be around for that though unfortunately, although I enjoy the command line experience and general philosophy of Eagle, these basic failures and the slow pace of development is problematic when trying to convince collaborators that Eagle is a platform we can use long term.

All the best

Jacob

Jacob Skinner <noreply-237304@element14.com> wrote:

Jorge,

Many thanks for taking time to answer.

I have tried your method and indeed this is a big step in the right

direction. However, I see one significant issue and that is that

imported blocks are added, but then essentially become just another part

of the main design, such that a change in one of the imported blocks

will not be reflected in the others, (or a change in the original will

not feed through to the others).

It's the difference between instantiation and replication. Both should be

possible...

--

Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt

-

Tel. 06151 162516 -

Fax. 06151 164321 -

CadSoft Guest wrote:

 

Jacob Skinner <noreply-237304@element14.com> wrote:

Jorge,

 

Many thanks for taking time to answer.

 

I have tried your method and indeed this is a big step in the right

direction. However, I see one significant issue and that is that

imported blocks are added, but then essentially become just another part

of the main design, such that a change in one of the imported blocks

will not be reflected in the others, (or a change in the original will

not feed through to the others).

 

It's the difference between instantiation and replication. Both should be

possible...

--

Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

 

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt

-

Tel. 06151 162516 -

Fax. 06151 164321 -

...Yes - but is it?!...How?!

I just purchased eagle 7 for Hierarchical Design but from this thread it's half a solution that doesn't work properly, if not can anyone elaborate. I ordered the hobbyist version and still haven't got a license/key yet so I can't play about.

It really seems to be more of an "outline mode" or a "block diagram mode"

(for schematics only, not boards or libraries) rather than a true

hierarchical design mode...

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

I really like the package in philosophical terms. Command line, pretty solid performance and generally a reasonable feature set, but the rate of development is really not acceptable. I can't see that the coding required to allow simple replication of layout blocks is insurmountable. If there were fundamental limitations with not having 'live' instances of circuit segments as described by Uwe Bonnes above, i could live with this (even though there should be instance capabilities)

However, to moot the new version as having 'hierarchical' functionality is very much constrained to 'hierarchical schematic capture' which is very much less than half the required feature to design anything properly!

There is a really ridiculous workaround by the way peeps (Sorry no link, but search for the symptoms of this problem and you should find it). It's ugly and involves cutting,pasting and opening and closing various files and basically 'cheating' the layout into the design file code. This to some degree proves that it is possible to have this functionality and leaves me thinking in conclusion that Farnell (who I have shopped with for a while and wholly recommend for their service and stock range generally by the way), have to some degree asset stripped  and left the development team woefully short of person power to effectively develop this codebase to include this essential feature

On 27.07.2014 22:07, Jacob Skinner wrote:

I can't see that the coding

required to allow simple replication of layout blocks is insurmountable.

If there were fundamental limitations with not having 'live' instances

of circuit segments as described by Uwe Bonnes above, i could live with

this (even though there should be instance capabilities)

Hey, I'm waiting for years for a "mirrored view" of the board (without

ULP usage), which is even easier to implement...

Markus

From Richard Hammerl, who I assume is a CADSoft employee:

Jacob,

It's true. The hierarchical design is only in the schematic. Currently EAGLE is not able to handle the modules as already routed parts in the layout. This option, of course, would be great to have and is in my opinion an improvement we should consider as a next step in EAGLE.

What you can already do is to import consistent schematic/layout files several times into your schematic/board. If you draw your pre-amplifier in a schematic and make a proper layout of it, you can import this project again and again. Schematic and layout will be duplicated then.

Best regards,

Richard Hammerl

It's true. The hierarchical design is only in the schematic. Currently

EAGLE is not able to handle the modules as already routed parts in the

layout.

I think it would have been better to hold off on the version 7 release

until this was completed.

What you can already do is to import consistent schematic/layout files

several times into your schematic/board. If you draw your

pre-amplifier

in a schematic and make a proper layout of it, you can import this

project again and again. Schematic and layout will be duplicated then.

But we don't have to pay for an upgrade to do that, do we?

If we don't use the autorouter, is there really any reason at all to

upgrade?  (Other than the idea that I like Jorge and want to see him remain

employed...)

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