I have a schematic & board that was created using Eagle Light on linux.
I just upgraded to standard to be able to use 4 layers. I changed the
drc layers tab to ((12)+(1516)), but the layers are still not
available in the "display" or "select layers" areas.
If I create a new board using standard and set the layers to
((12)+(1516)) it works as expected. Is there a problem moving boards
create under Eagle Light to Eagle Standard? Or am I missing something?
-Brad
Brad Schick wrote:
Ok thanks.
Wouldn't it make sense for that to happen automatically when someone
adds layers to a board that is running under standard or pro (even if it
was create in Light and the layers don't exist yet)?
My only real frustrations with Eagle are usability issues like this that
are really all over the place. It would be nice if Cadsoft read posts
like this one and along with providing a solution (which is
appreciated), also thought "can we make this easier in the future
without too much development effort".
Don't get me wrong, I like Eagle and appreciate its value. But I wish I
could spend less time reading the help files to do simple tasks. I'm
happy to read help files for involved tasks.
-Brad
I strongly second Brad's comments! We recently upgraded from the
2-layer Light edition to the 4-layer Standard edition, and I thought
I'd try out the 4-layer auto-router available in the Standard version,
on the board I'm presently working on.
I found in the autorouter setup window that only layer 1 and 16 were
available, so instead I tried to manually route a track, but found the
extra layers other than 1 and 16 I was expecting in the layer
selection pull-down did not exist. This satisfied me that it wasn't
an autorouter issue per se.
It didn't take long to figure out that I needed to specify the four
layers in the design rules. Alas after changing the edit->design
rules->layers->setup field to (12+1516) I still didn't have access
to the new layers. What then? Well I looked at the online FAQ, but
found nothing. Then I looked through the (printed) manual, but still
found nothing helpful. The CADSoft website mentioned these newsgroups
as a good place to get support, but it turned out our company firewall
blocks newsgroup access (TCP port 119).
So while waiting to have the firewall rules changed I decided to try
creating a new PCB. This new board did in fact have all four layers
available for routing (yay!). I suspected it would, having thought
about ways in which such an error could occur, as well as being a
really switched on guy (and very modest too 
).
So next day I have newsreader access, and here I am. Someone else
with the same experience! It feels so much better when you're not the
only one pulling your hair out. I tried the command
Layer 2
but that didn't work ('unknown layer 2' message). Then I tried
LAYER 2 Route2;
LAYER 15 Route15;
which worked a treat. Now I have all the layers available that I
expect, and the autorouter also lists them all. Problem solved.
Some things worth mentioning:
I'm not a long time user of Eagle, and while it's clear it has evolved
over the years from the bad old days when everything was entirely
command line driven, that's not how I (and I suspect many other recent
users) use it. Really, when you can click and drag and find all the
options you need under a menu like any other windows based interface,
why would you bother to learn the extensive command line interface?
So I know it purely from the windows based interface, and I baulk on
those few occasions when I have to resort to the command line, such
as with this layer business. I believe that if there is a graphical
interface, it should be possibly to do everything from the graphical
interface. Of course Eagle isn't the only example of this, one just
needs to look at any graphical Linux distribution to find oodles of
such flaws.
I don't use Eagle every day, so I'd probably forget the commands
pretty quickly anyway. I know the odd package building/library step
that's only possibly via command line and I have to look that up in
the manual almost each time I do it (every few months).
Suggesting 'help layer' as an obvious solution also isn't all that
helpful; for a start I (and I suspect others) don't know what the
'layer' command does, so there is no reason I would try typing 'help
layer'. Even if I did, the help really wouldn't help, because typing
'layer 2' didn't work. The help suggests that layer 2 and 15 should
be available, but they aren't. The help also talks about defining new
layers, but tells you to use layers above 100. I'm not even sure if I
did define a layer above 100, whether I could use it for routing (just
call it another one of those hunches).
So yes, we like Eagle (I chose it for our next project, which is
saying something), but it has some real quirks!
If the authors wish to improve Eagle, I'd suggest they start by
checking out some of Joel Spolsky's articles at www.joelonsoftware.com
as he (IMNSHO) has some great ideas for making software more usable.
Then again, maybe the authors are all German and don't hang out in the
English newsgroups and never even see this discussion - vielleicht
sollte ich eine Uebersetzung machen..?!
