A good page: "Eagle CAD Parts Search Engine"

I found a good page, http://www.esawdust.com/blog/eagle/partsearch.html

As the author said:

The Eagle PCB CAD program is very powerful and useful but one of its achilles heels (besides usability oddiities) is a very weak search capability.
With Eagle, you pretty much have to know the exact part and even what library it's in in order to find it and even then it can be difficult.

Richard_H over 15 years ago

Yes a nice page, but EAGLE has a built-in search function:

From our FAQ: http://www.cadsoft.de/faq.htm

Finding Libraries and Components

In the Control Panel's tree view Libraries branch are listed all the libraries stored in the given library path(s) which is set by the menu Options/Directories. Most libraries provide a short description of its content which is shown on the right half of the Control Panel as soon you click on one of the library entries in the tree view. Click the + character in front of the library name to unfold it, in order to see the Devices and Packages in the library. Click on one of these entries and you will get a preview on the right.
In addition there is a direct search function in the ADD dialog where you select the components in order to place it in your schematic or layout. In the Schematic Editor it is possible to search for Devices.
If you are looking for Packages, you have to do this in the Layout Editor.
Please note: The search function recognises only libraries that are in use (USE command). Whether a library file is in use or not can be checked quickly in the Tree View's Libraries branch. If the marker behind the library name is green, it is in use. Is it grey, it's not in use and not taken into consideration by the search function.
The ADD dialog has a Search line at the bottom. Enter the search pattern there. It makes sense to work with placeholders here. The asterisk * stands for any number of any character, while the question mark ? is used for exactly one single character. The options Smd and Description in the ADD dialog allow to extend the search for parts with smds and include the Device/Package descriptions.
If you don't find an adequate part in one of the EAGLE default libraries take a look at CadSoft's web server. In the Download area's Libraries directory are lots of user-contributed files available for free download. Otherwise it's easily possible to define your own part in EAGLE.

Richard
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Former Member over 15 years ago in reply to Richard_H

The problem I found with Eagle's search is that you must have enabled the library - so if you don't run with all the libraries enabled (like I do), then it doesn't find it, unless you know which library it's in - in which case you don't need to search for it (catch-22).

The esawdust search is okay, but doesn't find everything. For example, if you do a search for "74HC11", it will not find it, because it is expecting you to look for "74*11" (now, I know where the 74 libraries are, but it's an example).

In the end, I wrote my own which is accessible over the internet. It's currently experimental, and I haven't really announced it anywhere.

http://sparkle.tribbeck.com/eaglesearch/

This allows many more search types than esawdust.

I have put in capability for third party libraries to be searched (although I haven't indexed that many). The current index is for 5.6 - I've not updated it with the 5.7 libraries.
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Richard_H over 15 years ago in reply to Former Member

Hi Jason,

well done! Looks really nice.
You are right, you have to use the USE command to load libraries before searching. This could be done with the help of a script file that executes the USE command and assign the script with a function key.

Regards,
Richard
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Former Member over 15 years ago in reply to Richard_H

Thanks for that!

I don't use it every day, but when I do need it, it is much quicker than re-using all the libraries, and then re-disabling the ones I don't need (assuming I can remember which ones they were!). I limit the libraries in use to speed up the dialog for selecting devices (and also to make sure I'm not accidentally using the wrong component). Each project has its own list of libraries, so my ARM projects don't require PICs and vice-versa.

The last time I used it was to find out if a package existed in any of the libraries (I think it was 5-pin D-Pack2) - to find out if something doesn't exist would be quite laborious. Entering "5" pins and name containing "pack" or "pak" allowed me to search fairly quickly (well, with two searches). I think that may have been quite complicated to do within Eagle itself.
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Richard_H over 15 years ago in reply to Former Member

The first library to look into for a certain package is ref-packages.lbr. This one contains all the packages that are used in the other lbrs that come with EAGLE. Of course it does not include the packages of user-contributed files.
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huayuliang over 15 years ago in reply to Former Member

Good works! Thanks a lot!
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