Placing Parts in a Round Board

On 4/9/2014 6:43 AM, Michael Levin wrote:

I've been going through the Eagle Tutorial, so I'm playing around with

the various commands and actions I can do. I'm at the part on placing

parts on a board without a schematic. As you can see in the picture I

created a round board and tried placing parts. Eagle would only let me

place parts on the positive area from 0, 0. Whenever I tried placing

outside this area I got the attached error message. How do I fix this?

Hi Michael,

I hope you're doing well. Size limited versions of EAGLE enforce the

board size limitation by establishing 0,0 as the bottom left corner of

the board and whatever the maximum width and height allowed by the

version becomes the top right of the work area.

So in your case you have to place components in the positive X and Y

axis. You could move your board outline so that it is within the

allowable working area that way you can put components into it.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

Cadsoft Computer

I'm making a flashlight with 25 LED's, so I need 0, 0 at the center of the circle to make it easier to place the LED's evenly around the disc. It's the logical location of 0, 0 for a circle.

Thanks,

Mike

Michael Levin wrote on Thu, 10 April 2014 09:14

I'm making a flashlight with 25 LED's, so I need 0, 0 at the center of

the circle to make it easier to place the LED's evenly around the

disc.

It's the logical location of 0, 0 for a circle.

Hi Mike

You need to work within the restrictions of the edition you have.

Use the HELP to understand the commands mentioned below

The approach to take is to use the MARK command to effectively create a new

place for (0 0)

Once the MARK is in place you draw the circle using relative notation,

relative to the MARK.

Then place your leds using relative polar notation from the MARK and then

rotate the leds as required.

e.g. These few lines draw a circle centred at 40mm right and 40mm up from

(0 0)with a radius of 20mm

mark (40 40);

circle (R0 0)(R0 20);

Then, if you already have 25 LEDs somewhere in view on the board named

LED1, LED2 etc you can now place them with a mixture of mouse and command

line commands or all with the command line.

e.g.

move LED1 (P15 0);

move LED2 (P15 90);

move LED3 (P15 135);

Then you just rotate each LED to get its orientation the way you want it.

You can do that manually or by command line

rot R90 LED2;

rot R135 LED3;

Paste the following into the command line and it will all happen as

described provided you have three leds on your board already , named LED1,

LED2 LED3

grid mm;

mark (40 40);

circle (R0 0)(R0 20);

move LED1 (P15 0);

move LED2 (P15 90);

move LED3 (P15 135);

rot R90 LED2;

rot R135 LED3;

grid last ;

HTH

Warren

--

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

Ah I didn't know about the "mark" command. That'll work.

Thank you,

Mike

Hi Mike,

You could use the Component-Array.ulp from www.cadsoftusa.com to speed

up arranging the LEDs.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

That's a good idea, but I don't know how to use a ULP. Would you mind explaining how to use it?

Thanks,

Mike

Nevermind, I figured it out. Very cool little program!

Thanks,

Mike

Here's what it looks like now using the Component-Array.ulp. This really helped maximize the use of space. This is going to be a double sided board. Each LED will have it's own switching transistor. I'd like to place each transistor-LED pair on opposite sides of the board. I'm guessing that I should run the ULP for the transistors first using the same radius I did for LED's 1-18 and then again for 19-25, then transfer those to the bottom. Then repeat the process for the LED's and all the LED-transistor pairs should be lined up together?

I'm just playing around with the program right now. I will be making a schematic for this circuit, then will utilize your ULP to help arrange the LED-transistor pairs.

Thanks,

Mike