Auto-place, or at least "semi-automatic"

Joerg wrote on Wed, 26 November 2014 20:02

When switching to board view for the first time let Eagle scatter the

components the same way they are on the schematic, with multiple pages

in sub-groups.

I don't see any point to this.  The initial placement outside the board

area is irrelevant, so  code to arrange it any particular way would be a

waste of effort.

Auto-placement algorithms don't really work with current technology.

You're going to place every component manually anyway.  It doesn't matter

where it comes from outside the board area when you bring it into the board

area to place it.  You would typically be zoomed in to the area of the

board you are working on, or at least zoomed to just the board if the board

is small.  Parts you bring in to place will come from off screen someplace

no matter how they are arranged out there.  It makes no difference where

off screen that is.

This is one of the few tasks where a paper printout is still useful.  After

finishing the schematic, I print it out and put it on my desk.  As parts

are placed, they are crossed off in the schematic.  When everything on a

sheet is placed, the legend in the lower right corner is crossed off.  This

process continues until everything is crossed off, meaning all parts have

been placed.  Note that nowhere in this process does it matter at all where

the unplaced parts are, as long as they aren't on the board.

--

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

Olin Lathrop wrote:

Joerg wrote on Wed, 26 November 2014 20:02

When switching to board view for the first time let Eagle scatter the

components the same way they are on the schematic, with multiple pages

in sub-groups.

 

I don't see any point to this.  The initial placement outside the board

area is irrelevant, so  code to arrange it any particular way would be a

waste of effort.

 

Not at all, it will make it much easier to find stuff.

Auto-placement algorithms don't really work with current technology.

So why do even lower cost CAD programs such as Diptrace have it and

people use it?

You're going to place every component manually anyway.  It doesn't matter

where it comes from outside the board area when you bring it into the board

area to place it.  You would typically be zoomed in to the area of the

board you are working on, or at least zoomed to just the board if the board

is small.

And that's exactly the problem. You are constantly zooming in and out to

locate parts, especially if you do not have super-duper monitor

resolution combined with the eyes of an eagle (the real ones, soaring

high in the sky and able to spot a mouse a quarter mile below them).

... Parts you bring in to place will come from off screen someplace

no matter how they are arranged out there.  It makes no difference where

off screen that is.

 

This is one of the few tasks where a paper printout is still useful.  After

finishing the schematic, I print it out and put it on my desk.  As parts

are placed, they are crossed off in the schematic.  When everything on a

sheet is placed, the legend in the lower right corner is crossed off.  This

process continues until everything is crossed off, meaning all parts have

been placed.  Note that nowhere in this process does it matter at all where

the unplaced parts are, as long as they aren't on the board.

That's how we did that at the beginning of my career, almost 30 years

ago. I thought that in this day and age at least some auto-grouping

can't be too much to ask.

Imagine this process in a cramped coach class seat on a >10h

international flight where your "work space" is the size of a letter A

sheet and all you have is a netbook. I had four of those flights over

the last couple of months.

--

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Am 27.11.2014 02:02, schrieb Joerg:

You cannot move one little thing

unless you move it into the board area. You can't even move it back out

if you grabbed the wrong part. Just let people arrange parts outside the

board area wherever they want but without routing permission. That will

uphold the license limitations because they can only route after the

affected parts have been moved inside the board area.

Since Joerg's idea is a good one, let me elaborate on that a bit more to

(hopefully) prevent misunderstandings:

  1. YES, it REALLY is a nuisance that, once you moved a part inside the

     routing area, you cannot move it back outside anymore due to the

     size limitations. Especially for limited-sized boards, one often

     wants to try better placements, and this is often quite hard for

     the "non-profit" users who cannot move components back outside.

  2. If CadSoft would let people 'move' everything everywhere, but not

     'route' everywhere, some people would surely place and route a

     small area, move that outside the allowed area, route the next

     small chunk, move it outside, etc. All in all, users could then

     easily create and route large boards, just separated in smaller

     chunks. This is quite probably NOT what CadSoft wants...

  3. Therefore, my own suggestion would be to:

      a) Allow MOVING of UNrouted components (that are NOT connected

         to ANY copper, but just to 'unrouted' signals) everywhere.

      b) Disallow MOVING of ROUTED components (that have at least

         one copper track attached) outside the allowed area.

      c) Disallow ROUTING and WIRING outside the allowed area.

      d) Disallow MOVING of copper tracks or other wires outside

         the allowed area.

     This should take care of (2) and additional tricksters who

     would otherwise do one of the following things:

      - Route copper in a way that the copper overlaps the corresponding

        pads, but is not EXACTLY positioned on top of the pad center, so

        it would be 'unrouted' mathematically, but correctly routed

        mechanically.

      - Use self-defined layers for the copper and not ROUTE tracks,

        but just WIRE them.

     (The above restriction for MOVE would also apply for COPY and

     PASTE)

The net benefit for non-profit users would be that they could really

FULLY use the allowed area, including trying differently routed designs,

which could be ripped up and placed outside the allowed area again.

Probably this is exactly what Joerg meant, but just to clear things up...

Andreas Weidner

Andreas Weidner wrote:

Am 27.11.2014 02:02, schrieb Joerg:

You cannot move one little thing

unless you move it into the board area. You can't even move it back out

if you grabbed the wrong part. Just let people arrange parts outside the

board area wherever they want but without routing permission. That will

uphold the license limitations because they can only route after the

affected parts have been moved inside the board area.

 

Since Joerg's idea is a good one, let me elaborate on that a bit more to

(hopefully) prevent misunderstandings:

1. YES, it REALLY is a nuisance that, once you moved a part inside the

    routing area, you cannot move it back outside anymore due to the

    size limitations. Especially for limited-sized boards, one often

    wants to try better placements, and this is often quite hard for

    the "non-profit" users who cannot move components back outside.

That limitation also goes for the not so cheap standard version. I

bought that because I normally do not do layouts myself but for one

upcoming project must likely crank out a few small-size 4-layer fast shots.

2. If CadSoft would let people 'move' everything everywhere, but not

    'route' everywhere, some people would surely place and route a

    small area, move that outside the allowed area, route the next

    small chunk, move it outside, etc. All in all, users could then

    easily create and route large boards, just separated in smaller

    chunks. This is quite probably NOT what CadSoft wants...

3. Therefore, my own suggestion would be to:

     a) Allow MOVING of UNrouted components (that are NOT connected

        to ANY copper, but just to 'unrouted' signals) everywhere.

     b) Disallow MOVING of ROUTED components (that have at least

        one copper track attached) outside the allowed area.

     c) Disallow ROUTING and WIRING outside the allowed area.

     d) Disallow MOVING of copper tracks or other wires outside

        the allowed area.

    This should take care of (2) and additional tricksters who

    would otherwise do one of the following things:

     - Route copper in a way that the copper overlaps the corresponding

       pads, but is not EXACTLY positioned on top of the pad center, so

       it would be 'unrouted' mathematically, but correctly routed

       mechanically.

     - Use self-defined layers for the copper and not ROUTE tracks,

       but just WIRE them.

    (The above restriction for MOVE would also apply for COPY and

    PASTE)

The net benefit for non-profit users would be that they could really

FULLY use the allowed area, including trying differently routed designs,

which could be ripped up and placed outside the allowed area again.

 

Probably this is exactly what Joerg meant, but just to clear things up...

 

Yes, that's what I meant with "without routing permission". It would be

perfect. From a code point of view it should be fairly simple for

Cadsoft. Just warn about or, better yet, delete all routed traces the

millisecond they are dragged outside the licensed board limit. That

would allow situations like "Oh, I think I should have done the RF

section first so lets just scrap all this stuff over here and move it

back out for now". Then you could even move routed parts back out, with

the understanding that they'd lose all trace connections.

--

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Am 27.11.2014 19:39, schrieb Joerg:

You're going to place every component manually anyway.  It doesn't matter

where it comes from outside the board area when you bring it into the board

area to place it.  You would typically be zoomed in to the area of the

board you are working on, or at least zoomed to just the board if the board

is small.

Yes, this is EXACTLY how to create a nice layout.

And that's exactly the problem. You are constantly zooming in and out to

locate parts, especially if you do not have super-duper monitor

resolution combined with the eyes of an eagle (the real ones, soaring

high in the sky and able to spot a mouse a quarter mile below them).

No, you do NOT need ANY zooming, and you don't need to have good eyes,

either. But, to make that clearer: Olin is a professional long-term user

who surely knows EAGLE by heart and, above all, USES THE COMMAND LINE.

For placing components on board, the command line is absolutely

gorgeous, and you use it as follows:

  1. Make a printout of your schematics. That's not STRICTLY necessary,

     but - believe it or not - the quality of your routing DEFINITELY

     improves if you have a printout available and do NOT have to

     constantly switch screens between schematics and board. If you use

     TWO monitors (one for the schematics, one for the board), a

     printout is NOT necessary.

  2. Zoom into a completely EMPTY space where you later want to place

     your components.

  3. Do NOT try to zoom back to where the components actually ARE

     placed right now - just completely ignore their current positions

     (you don't know these positions, anyway).

  4. Do NOT try to move components by trying to find them on screen

     and clicking on them - that's INCREDIBLY difficult and

     time-consuming.

  5. Instead, decide which component you WANT to move by consulting the

     schematics and then TYPE the corresponding command into the board's

     command line. E.g., if you want to move R1, type 'mov r1' (+ENTER),

     and immediately you have the desired component at your mouse tip,

     INDEPENDENT of where it was located previously! You do NOT need to

     search OR zoom OR pan, so you can find and move your components

     approximately twenty times faster than by just using the mouse.

  6. After placing the component where you want it, the MOVE command is

     STILL active, so you don't even need to type it in again, so you

     just type 'N3' and have N3 at your mouse tip for easy placing.

  7. Quite often, do a RATSNEST to improve airwire display.

  8. For even quicker access, create key combinations for the MOVE

     command (e.g. CTRL+M) and RATSNEST.

This is one of the few tasks where a paper printout is still useful.  After

finishing the schematic, I print it out and put it on my desk.

Yes. As already mentioned, this creates the best routing results.

Imagine this process in a cramped coach class seat on a >10h

international flight where your "work space" is the size of a letter A

sheet and all you have is a netbook. I had four of those flights over

the last couple of months.

With the above method, you can easily ignore ANY default positioning of

components, because you ONLY work with the area where you desired that

components SHOULD go. You don't have to search and find and click.

In my opinion, EAGLE's command line is its best feature and certainly

time-saver no. 1. One just has to overcome the sometimes available

personal reluctance to use it ('typing? no - we did that with MS-DOS,

now we want to use the mouse instead').

Andreas Weidner

Am 28.11.2014 18:25, schrieb Joerg:

Yes, that's what I meant with "without routing permission". It would be

perfect. From a code point of view it should be fairly simple for

Cadsoft. Just warn about or, better yet, delete all routed traces the

millisecond they are dragged outside the licensed board limit. That

would allow situations like "Oh, I think I should have done the RF

section first so lets just scrap all this stuff over here and move it

back out for now". Then you could even move routed parts back out, with

the understanding that they'd lose all trace connections.

Won-der-ful. Let's do it like that. I'll just look into the source

and... ah, what a pity, I don't HAVE any source. Well, so we probably

just have to wait...

Andreas Weidner

Joerg wrote on Thu, 27 November 2014 13:39

I don't see any point to this.  The initial placement outside the

board

area is irrelevant, so code to arrange it any particular way would

be a

waste of effort.

 

Not at all, it will make it much easier to find stuff.

But you never go "finding" components out in the Ort Cloud.  You bring them

in as necessary to where you are currently working on placement.  When you

reference a component, it attaches to the mouse cursor.  It doesn't matter

at all where it was before that.  You don't need to know, in fact don't

want to know, where it came from.

For example, I have F12 in the board editor set up to do "ratsnest; move".

I hit F12, then enter the component designator, like "R27", and poof, it's

attached to the mouse cursor.  Where it was before this operation is

completely irrelevant.  It was just "out there" somewhere.  There is never

a need to look at the Ort Cloud during placement.  Sometimes when I think

I'm close to done with placement I'll do a "window" to see if there are any

stragglers I missed.

You seem to be imagining picking thru the cloud of components looking for

the right one visually.  That would be very tedious and is not how it's

done.  Get some experience with Eagle and learn to use it well before

asking for new features.

Quote:

Auto-placement algorithms don't really work with current

technology.

 

So why do even lower cost CAD programs such as Diptrace have it and

people use it?

Because the world has a large supply of marketing people and gullible

users.

Quote:

And that's exactly the problem. You are constantly zooming in and out

to locate parts, especially if you do not have super-duper monitor

resolution combined with the eyes of an eagle (the real ones, soaring

high in the sky and able to spot a mouse a quarter mile below them).

Again, you need to first learn to use Eagle effectively.  You don't ever

drag parts from the cloud to the board.  That would be very tedious,

regardless of how organized the cloud of parts might be.  Using Eagle right

is quicker, less tedious, and doesn't require and new organization of

unplaced parts.

Quote:

Imagine this process in a cramped coach class seat on a >10h

international flight where your "work space" is the size of a letter A

sheet and all you have is a netbook. I had four of those flights over the

last couple of months.

Then you especially don't want to do it the way you describe.  A printout

is still useful because it allows you to cross off parts as they are

placed, making it easier not to miss any.  But either way, not dragging

parts from off-board reduces the need for panning and zooming more than any

organization of the unrouted parts would allow.

--

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

Andreas Weidner wrote:

Am 27.11.2014 19:39, schrieb Joerg:

You're going to place every component manually anyway.  It doesn't

matter

where it comes from outside the board area when you bring it into the

board

area to place it.  You would typically be zoomed in to the area of the

board you are working on, or at least zoomed to just the board if the

board

is small.

 

Yes, this is EXACTLY how to create a nice layout.

 

There is another method to create nice layouts and I've seen that many

years ago on a large mainframe system (late 80s!). The layout software

clustered the parts somewhat similar to the schematic. That is much more

intuitive to many people including me and the layouters at that company

preferred this method greatly over the command line.

And that's exactly the problem. You are constantly zooming in and out to

locate parts, especially if you do not have super-duper monitor

resolution combined with the eyes of an eagle (the real ones, soaring

high in the sky and able to spot a mouse a quarter mile below them).

 

No, you do NOT need ANY zooming, and you don't need to have good eyes,

either. But, to make that clearer: Olin is a professional long-term user

who surely knows EAGLE by heart and, above all, USES THE COMMAND LINE.

For placing components on board, the command line is absolutely

gorgeous, and you use it as follows:

1. Make a printout of your schematics. That's not STRICTLY necessary,

    but - believe it or not - the quality of your routing DEFINITELY

    improves if you have a printout available and do NOT have to

    constantly switch screens between schematics and board. If you use

    TWO monitors (one for the schematics, one for the board), a

    printout is NOT necessary.

Funny that you mention it, this morning I ordered a new PC and also a

second 27" monitor with exactly such purposes in mind.

2. Zoom into a completely EMPTY space where you later want to place

    your components.

3. Do NOT try to zoom back to where the components actually ARE

    placed right now - just completely ignore their current positions

    (you don't know these positions, anyway).

4. Do NOT try to move components by trying to find them on screen

    and clicking on them - that's INCREDIBLY difficult and

    time-consuming.

5. Instead, decide which component you WANT to move by consulting the

    schematics and then TYPE the corresponding command into the board's

    command line. E.g., if you want to move R1, type 'mov r1' (+ENTER),

    and immediately you have the desired component at your mouse tip,

    INDEPENDENT of where it was located previously! You do NOT need to

    search OR zoom OR pan, so you can find and move your components

    approximately twenty times faster than by just using the mouse.

6. After placing the component where you want it, the MOVE command is

    STILL active, so you don't even need to type it in again, so you

    just type 'N3' and have N3 at your mouse tip for easy placing.

7. Quite often, do a RATSNEST to improve airwire display.

8. For even quicker access, create key combinations for the MOVE

    command (e.g. CTRL+M) and RATSNEST.

 

Sure you can do that. You could even use the mouse for the move command

like Olin said. I am used to the command line from the Orcad SDT days.

Still, not all layouters work that way. Many do not even want the

keyboard on the desk during placement and routing.

This is one of the few tasks where a paper printout is still useful.

After

finishing the schematic, I print it out and put it on my desk.

 

Yes. As already mentioned, this creates the best routing results.

 

Imagine this process in a cramped coach class seat on a >10h

international flight where your "work space" is the size of a letter A

sheet and all you have is a netbook. I had four of those flights over

the last couple of months.

 

With the above method, you can easily ignore ANY default positioning of

components, because you ONLY work with the area where you desired that

components SHOULD go. You don't have to search and find and click.

 

In my opinion, EAGLE's command line is its best feature and certainly

time-saver no. 1. One just has to overcome the sometimes available

personal reluctance to use it ('typing? no - we did that with MS-DOS,

now we want to use the mouse instead').

 

I grew up with DOS. Ok, now I've given my age away. Still, when it comes

to layouts I prefer not to have to use the keyboard much. I don't do

layouts much but I sometimes take over when very critical RF stuff must

be placed and routed.

--

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Olin Lathrop wrote:

Joerg wrote on Thu, 27 November 2014 13:39

I don't see any point to this.  The initial placement outside the

board

area is irrelevant, so code to arrange it any particular way would

be a

waste of effort.

Not at all, it will make it much easier to find stuff.

 

But you never go "finding" components out in the Ort Cloud.  You bring them

in as necessary to where you are currently working on placement.  When you

reference a component, it attaches to the mouse cursor.  It doesn't matter

at all where it was before that.  You don't need to know, in fact don't

want to know, where it came from.

 

For example, I have F12 in the board editor set up to do "ratsnest; move".

I hit F12, then enter the component designator, like "R27", and poof, it's

attached to the mouse cursor.  Where it was before this operation is

completely irrelevant.  It was just "out there" somewhere.  There is never

a need to look at the Ort Cloud during placement.  Sometimes when I think

I'm close to done with placement I'll do a "window" to see if there are any

stragglers I missed.

 

You seem to be imagining picking thru the cloud of components looking for

the right one visually.  That would be very tedious and is not how it's

done. ...

That's how I saw many layouters do it. It was very easy when the SW

clustered the parts roughly right. Then you could drag a whole section

over, move individual parts a bit, rotate here and there, and route. No

need to type in R27, Q34, C159, C112, D38 and hundreds of others.

Get some experience with Eagle and learn to use it well before

asking for new features.

 

I am using Eagle since about 10 years and CAD in general since about 30

years. Back when layouts were usually done on mainframes.

Generally I farm out layouts but often sit next to the layouter during

critical placement and routing. Sometimes I take over for a while. In

recent times we occasionally did that via online conferencing. You can

hand off mouse control there.

Quote:

Auto-placement algorithms don't really work with current

technology.

So why do even lower cost CAD programs such as Diptrace have it and

people use it?

 

Because the world has a large supply of marketing people and gullible

users.

 

I am sure there are layouters who would disagree.

Quote:

And that's exactly the problem. You are constantly zooming in and out

to locate parts, especially if you do not have super-duper monitor

resolution combined with the eyes of an eagle (the real ones, soaring

high in the sky and able to spot a mouse a quarter mile below them).

 

Again, you need to first learn to use Eagle effectively.  You don't ever

drag parts from the cloud to the board.  That would be very tedious,

regardless of how organized the cloud of parts might be.  Using Eagle right

is quicker, less tedious, and doesn't require and new organization of

unplaced parts.

 

Quote:

Imagine this process in a cramped coach class seat on a >10h

international flight where your "work space" is the size of a letter A

sheet and all you have is a netbook. I had four of those flights over the

last couple of months.

 

Then you especially don't want to do it the way you describe.

Nope, it's especially where you need it. Because you don't have enough

screen space and also no other space to display a schematic. Unless you

can convince your seat neighbor to not watch the movie and tape the

schematic over his IFE screen. It's hard to do a layout without seeing

the schematic all the time but I've done it. If you are the designer of

the circuitry it isn't that tough as long as the parts are grouped

somewhat together so you don't have to squint and follow air wires much.

                                                    ... A printout

is still useful because it allows you to cross off parts as they are

placed, making it easier not to miss any.  But either way, not dragging

parts from off-board reduces the need for panning and zooming more than any

organization of the unrouted parts would allow.

Without a schematic visible all the time that only works if you have

photographic memory

--

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 27/11/2014 2:02 p.m., Joerg wrote:

.........Also, I strongly suggest to let the "lesser versions" such as Eagle

Standard pre-group clusters outside the board area just to get a grasp

of what belongs together. Right now it refuses with an error message

"objects outside allowed board area". You cannot move one little thing

unless you move it into the board area. You can't even move it back out

if you grabbed the wrong part.

(1) If you pick up a part and realise it is the wrong part before

dropping it onto the board simply hit ESC and the move command will be

cancelled and the part will go back into the heap.

(2) If you have just dropped it onto the board, Undo (CTL-Z) will put it

back into the heap. If its a few actions back you can select from the

undo list and undo everything back to that move that took the part out

of the heap and then re-do everything after that point manually again.

(3) I created a ULP a while back (for these "lesser versions") that lets

you remove a single element, automatically placing it below and left

aligned with the heap. If there is no heap then it is placed left

aligned with the origin and below it.  It works well but needs a review.

I'll endeavour to upload it before Christmas(this Christmas) so keep an

eye out for it.

Regards

Warren