Have a question about CadSoft EAGLE?  Ask our Expert, Richard! (Archive)

Dear Richard,

Again, sorry for my bad english . I have a task to draw my schools symbol from vias, using ulp. I can calculate the coordinates for the vias in my ulp, but I can't draw any. In my another discussion you answered me, that is have to use a script. My question now is how can I autorun and than delete the script after the ulp was executed?

Thanks for your help.

Hello again,

I am not sure what you exactly want to do....

As far as I understand you want to write an ULP that places vias in your layout, correct?

So you have to write an ULP that executes commands in the EAGLE layout editor. It is useful to let the ULP create a script (which contains a number of EAGLE commands executed subsequently) for your purose. Look into one of the ULPs in order to get out how this works, for example into change-via-by-stack.ulp:

Here a short part of it where we create a script file that will be executed:

board(B) {
    script = filesetext(B.name, ".scr");
    output(script, "wtD") {  // temporary file
      set_layer();
      B.signals(S) {
        S.vias(V) {
          if (V.start == via_start && V.end == via_end) {
            if (stack) printf("CHANGE VIA %s (%.4f %.4f);\n", new_stack, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
            else {
              if (v_shape) printf("CHANGE SHAPE %s (%.4f %.4f);\n", v_shape, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
              if (strupr(argv[3]) != "NO") {
                if (v_drill) printf("CHANGE DRIL %.4f (%.4f %.4f);\n", v_drill, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
                else         printf("CHANGE DRIL (%.4f %.4f);\n", u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
                if (v_diam)  printf("CHANGE DIAM %.4f (%.4f %.4f);\n", v_diam, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
                else         printf("CHANGE DIAM (%.4f %.4f);\n", u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      printf("GRID LAST;\n");
      printf("DISPLAY NONE ");
      B.layers(L) if (L.visible) printf(" %d", L.number);
      printf(";\n");
    }
  }

dlgDialog("test") {
  string text;
  int t = fileread(text, script);
  dlgTextEdit(text);
  dlgHBoxLayout {
    dlgPushButton("OK") dlgAccept();
    dlgPushButton("esc") { dlgReject(); exit(-1); }
    dlgStretch(1);
  }

........................

........................

........................

  exit("SCRIPT '" + script + "'\n");

The output() statement creates the file, printf() writes the commands into the file. exit() executes the script file.

Hopehis helps......

Regards,

Richard

Hello again,

I am not sure what you exactly want to do....

As far as I understand you want to write an ULP that places vias in your layout, correct?

So you have to write an ULP that executes commands in the EAGLE layout editor. It is useful to let the ULP create a script (which contains a number of EAGLE commands executed subsequently) for your purose. Look into one of the ULPs in order to get out how this works, for example into change-via-by-stack.ulp:

Here a short part of it where we create a script file that will be executed:

board(B) {
    script = filesetext(B.name, ".scr");
    output(script, "wtD") {  // temporary file
      set_layer();
      B.signals(S) {
        S.vias(V) {
          if (V.start == via_start && V.end == via_end) {
            if (stack) printf("CHANGE VIA %s (%.4f %.4f);\n", new_stack, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
            else {
              if (v_shape) printf("CHANGE SHAPE %s (%.4f %.4f);\n", v_shape, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
              if (strupr(argv[3]) != "NO") {
                if (v_drill) printf("CHANGE DRIL %.4f (%.4f %.4f);\n", v_drill, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
                else         printf("CHANGE DRIL (%.4f %.4f);\n", u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
                if (v_diam)  printf("CHANGE DIAM %.4f (%.4f %.4f);\n", v_diam, u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
                else         printf("CHANGE DIAM (%.4f %.4f);\n", u2mm(V.x), u2mm(V.y) );
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      printf("GRID LAST;\n");
      printf("DISPLAY NONE ");
      B.layers(L) if (L.visible) printf(" %d", L.number);
      printf(";\n");
    }
  }

dlgDialog("test") {
  string text;
  int t = fileread(text, script);
  dlgTextEdit(text);
  dlgHBoxLayout {
    dlgPushButton("OK") dlgAccept();
    dlgPushButton("esc") { dlgReject(); exit(-1); }
    dlgStretch(1);
  }

........................

........................

........................

  exit("SCRIPT '" + script + "'\n");

The output() statement creates the file, printf() writes the commands into the file. exit() executes the script file.

Hopehis helps......

Regards,

Richard