Change layer during routing?

Last time I checked in Ubuntu, the terminal still needed a three button mouse to copy/paste text. But this is a very minor issue. Generally Ubuntu is a very decent OS; if I would have to choose between Windows an Ubuntu, I would go with the latter.

On 27/05/16 19:53, Lix Paulian wrote:

Linux may still have some strange quirks going back to X-Windows, but Macs and Windows are quite the same).

What utter rot!

As I already wrote elsewhere, my hope is that the CadSoft guys would listen and do finally something. You don't have to take this personally. I much appreciate your help.

And speaking about GUI conventions, meanwhile all major platforms came to a common denominator. Linux may still have some strange quirks going back to X-Windows, but Macs and Windows are quite the same).

Best regards,

Lix

Lix Paulian wrote:

 

I am not sure I can follow this idea of Eagle is doing certain operations better by not using a standard interface.

Damn you are good at mis-quoting people aren't you?

rpeterson wrote:

 

I do think you raise some valid points, but there are a lot of things EAGLE does differently that work better than in other packages too.

I said better than other packages, and by implication this would be other comparable packages. I've used a lot of ECAD packages and they all have their own UI quirks.

Yes ideally a GUI expert would come along and help streamline the UI (btw, I did actually study interaction design as part of a course I did a few years back, it should be intuitive but the most important goal is to reduce the number of operations you need to take to perform an action to a minimum, for technical apps like CAD you can assume a certain level of user competence / ability to learn) but it's not as cut and dried as forcing it to confirm to a set of UI conventions (which UI conventions btw? Windows style conventions? If so that wouldn't be consistent on my Mac or on my Linux machines...) which were likely specified with typical office applications in mind and which have very different use case requirements to ECAD. With ECAD (or any other type of CAD) you are always going to have to learn the some of the UI paradigms otherwise operations are going to take longer to do with a lot more clicks.

To be blunt, you're not doing yourself any favours here. I'm happy to help people who have genuine technical issues but if you continue whinging and complaining about everything you hate about the EAGLE's UI then people will soon get bored of listening to you and be less than willing to go out of their way to answer your questions.

I am not sure I can follow this idea of Eagle is doing certain operations better by not using a standard interface. In my view this is a legend which seems to be quite common in the Eagle community. I can't imagine anything that currently Eagle does, that can't be done at least as efficiently (if not easier) by using standard UI concepts. I am working for large company that does professional cine & video cameras and accessories (those used for filming most of the Hollywood blockbusters) and of course we do have GUIs on our products. But: we have a professional especially hired to design GUIs through the whole product line, so that we remain consistent. And believe me, one of the factors our customers prise, is the ease of use of our products. I doubt CadSoft has such a professional...

Hi Lix,

I do think you raise some valid points, but there are a lot of things EAGLE does differently that work better than in other packages too. Just because they are different and unexpected doesn't mean they should change them if they work better.

I've just done some experimenting on applications I have installed and many have a right mouse button context menu that doesn't require you to select something first. Web browsers are a prime example of this. More in line with EAGLE type apps I looked at Autodesk's Fusion 360 and this too has right click context menus that don't require you to select something with a selection tool first. I'm not sure how a separate selection tool would speed up the process of selecting the correct object for a context menu, it would still have the same limitations of the number of objects within the tools selection catchment area and you'd have to scroll through all the matching objects just the same.

Adding in a step of having to choose the selection tool first and then having to choose the tool you want to use after selecting things seems counter productive to me as you have more mouse clicks per thing you actually want to do. Maybe I have misunderstood what you intended here.

With regards to objects being glued to the cursor on move, yes I can see your point on that, it would be nice to be able to group select object and then just click and drag around without having to go "right-click->move group" for every adjustment. This does make it harder to just tweak a position slightly as it moves to your current cursor position when you select the menu option. The up side to this is you can't accidentally drop a block you are moving in the middle of somewhere else which can be really annoying with other tools, especially if there is a lot of scrolling involved as part of the move. I'm sure there are ways CADSoft can tweak this use case without having to rewrite the whole UI paradigm though.

Best Regards,

Rachael

Thanks Rachael again for your help.

Eagle being not obvious and not following conventions is unfortunately so true! As a consequence I find myself doing (or expecting) things in other (standard) programs the way Eagle does! And this is not funny at all. On the other hand, if I don't use Eagle for a while, I have again difficulties to accommodate. And this is something the CadSoft guys should really think about. This is really counter-productive on a wide range.

Without wanting to go into details (one could write tens of pages of what is wrong with Eagle's GUI), there are however several striking things. For one, CadSoft "invented" the right-click contextual menu without first selecting an object! To my knowledge this is something no software did to date! Good luck of being on the right object when you right click. And there are so many other strange inconsistencies. They really need a GUI specialist (one with academical grades).

Of course there are many small things that they handled in their particular way, things that have nothing to do with doing certain operations faster or not (like simple save/new/create/load dialog boxes); but there is a fundamental thing that I can't understand: why on earth they don't add the standard "arrow" (or "hand", or something similar) button? This would allow one to select an object (or for the matter of fact, using cmd and/or shift click, multiple objects); then you should be able to do anything with it/them, by clicking the already existing delete, move, rotate, flip, copy, smash, lock, mirror.... etc buttons/functions. Take the current move command for instance: the paradigm of having an object or group of objects "glued" to the mouse while moving is simply wrong. And you do a lot of moving in a CAD software. As I said, I am finding myself expecting to have objects "glued" to the mouse in other CAD programs :-(

They can keep many of the current concepts (where I can see that there are certain advantages), but they still can do this while migrating to a modern standards-based GUI.

Best regards,

Lix

Yes CHANGE LAYER is only used to change the layer of existing completed traces, polygons etc. It's a common mistake as it can be a little confusing when you first come to EAGLE.

FWIW, when I first came to EAGLE I found initially things were totally not obvious and didn't follow conventions. Now I am used to using it, in many cases I find it far simpler to use than many of the expensive tools from the major ECAD vendors, and I have used several of these over the years. One of the biggest things for me though is the openness of EAGLE for expandability using ULP. If it doesn't have a feature I need I can usually write something that will do it or approximate it. There is a learning curve there though and ULP needs some updating with new constructs, built-in functions, and objects to make it really powerful.

Anyway, I'm glad you're now able to change layers with ease. If you need any more help just ask.

Best Regards,

Rachael

My error was that I ASSIGNed to a key the CHANGE LAYER command, and this would interrupt the ROUTE command. With LAYER it works! thanks for the hint.

BTW, regarding the issues I had with the Schematic editor, I tried everything including your hints, however the efforts in finalising a schematic with Eagle are considerable larger than with any other schematic editor (at least compared with those I already know). The acronym "Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor" is one of the worst jokes I have come upon.

Lix Paulian wrote on Thu, 26 May 2016 21:51

I can't believe that CadSoft has implemented no alternative to the

middle button to change layers.

Except of course the "LAYER" command?

If you only have a small number of layers you could assign keyboard

shortcuts to issue different "LAYER LayerNum;" commands.

Ideally I guess a couple of keys to scroll backwards and forwards through

the available layers would be nice. ULP does allow you to access which

layers are available but I can't see an easy way of determining the

currently selected layer at the moment otherwise it would be trivial to

implement this functionality in ULP and assign that to shortcuts.

Best Regards,

Rachael

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