Hello everyone,
I am not a longtime user of Eagle and unfortunately I could not find an answer to my question anywhere online. I hope someone would have a solution for me here.
As you know, there many parts which are offered in different packages. Often the packages have a different pin count. Let's take the the ATmega328P from the popular Arduino project as example. There is the 28 pin DIP package and then there is the 32 pin TQFP package. I tried to create the part in my own library, and Eagle did not let me use the 32 pin symbol with the 28 pin package. The selection option was greyed out and the message was that the footprint does not have enough pins for the symbol. So all the nice functionality of having one part with multiple variants was lost to me. There is no way to change from through-hole to SMD footprint in the pcb editor with just a click. I am basically forced to create a new symbol for each version of the uC. If I want to replace one footprint for another, I will have to delete the part from my schematic, insert the other and reconnect all the pins manually. It would be nice, if I could let Eagle replace the package variants and reconnect all pins automatically, only ripping up the nets to pins which are not assigned from the symbol to the package... Then I wouldn't have to enter any description and device attributes twice or more times in the library either...
If anyone knows a solution for that, please share. (I think I read that in version 6 we'll be able to name multiple pins the same name, which will basically mean same net, and maybe this way it will be possible to have one symbol with multiple footprint variants which have different pin count; nevertheless I would still like to have this in v 5.11.0 if at all possible).
Thanks,
Todor
