re-touch:More than 16 layers

 

That last statement is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Most people who think

they will have boards that approach and may exceed 16 layers simply choose

another CAD package.  They aren't going to even consider EAGLE since they

can't be sure that it will be able to handle their full requirements.

 

That's the wrong question to ask.  The question to ask is how much market

share can we add by increasing the number of layers i.e. how many people

would choose EAGLE IF it supported more layers.  But that question misses

too.

Hi James,

You bring up a very valid point, however addressing it is difficult. How

could we even gauge how much market share we could capture without it

eventually turning into just a wild guess?

I personally like the idea of the additional layers, I don't think the

breaking of old scripts and ULPs is enough of a deterrent to the feature.

I guess the key point here would be how we can further strengthen the

argument for more layers in EAGLE. I'm not clear on how we could do

that. I'm open to suggestions though

  If you are routing 16+ layers then you most likely have many, many

differential pairs and a bunch of length matching (like Morten's board

above).

The few boards that have come through my hands requiring more than

sixteen layers have been due to a large number of GND and POWER plane

layers for shielding. I agree that Morten's use case is probably more

common.

  Until you have true, polished support for those design elements no

one is going to choose EAGLE for those types of boards--the effort is

simply too big when other tools do a lot to help.  So you have to address

ALL of the design elements and then someone can consider EAGLE.  Until that

happens you can't use stats from your current user base to see what support

it would have because your current user base choose EAGLE in spite of it

not supporting these requirements--so obviously they don't think it's

important.

As you mention here, the users that require more than 16 layers

generally use another tool. Getting them to switch to EAGLE even if it

did support the appropriate design elements would not be a given. It

goes back to figuring out a way to include these factors into the

decisions for feature implementations.

I'm going to think about this for a bit. If anyone has any ideas I'm all

ears.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

 

That last statement is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Most people who think

they will have boards that approach and may exceed 16 layers simply choose

another CAD package.  They aren't going to even consider EAGLE since they

can't be sure that it will be able to handle their full requirements.

 

That's the wrong question to ask.  The question to ask is how much market

share can we add by increasing the number of layers i.e. how many people

would choose EAGLE IF it supported more layers.  But that question misses

too.

Hi James,

You bring up a very valid point, however addressing it is difficult. How

could we even gauge how much market share we could capture without it

eventually turning into just a wild guess?

I personally like the idea of the additional layers, I don't think the

breaking of old scripts and ULPs is enough of a deterrent to the feature.

I guess the key point here would be how we can further strengthen the

argument for more layers in EAGLE. I'm not clear on how we could do

that. I'm open to suggestions though

  If you are routing 16+ layers then you most likely have many, many

differential pairs and a bunch of length matching (like Morten's board

above).

The few boards that have come through my hands requiring more than

sixteen layers have been due to a large number of GND and POWER plane

layers for shielding. I agree that Morten's use case is probably more

common.

  Until you have true, polished support for those design elements no

one is going to choose EAGLE for those types of boards--the effort is

simply too big when other tools do a lot to help.  So you have to address

ALL of the design elements and then someone can consider EAGLE.  Until that

happens you can't use stats from your current user base to see what support

it would have because your current user base choose EAGLE in spite of it

not supporting these requirements--so obviously they don't think it's

important.

As you mention here, the users that require more than 16 layers

generally use another tool. Getting them to switch to EAGLE even if it

did support the appropriate design elements would not be a given. It

goes back to figuring out a way to include these factors into the

decisions for feature implementations.

I'm going to think about this for a bit. If anyone has any ideas I'm all

ears.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia