I started using Eagle ↗ when I designed the Fri3d Camp badge, my first solo-SMD project. This section is devoted to my notes on learning and using it.

Eagle?

Eagle is (still) the de facto standard in PCB design, although there are some other applications that seem very promising. I would really love to try out Altium Circuitmaker ↗, but - for now - it’s still Windows-only and running it in a VM just doesn’t cut it. So for now, I’m a happy Eagle user. Once they release a MacOS version … they have an Eagle importer ;-)

Resources

I don’t intend to create a complete tutorial and/or documentation. There are so many great pages around the internet. Below is the selection I used to learn Eagle and that I refer back to when things slip my mind ;-)

• https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-eagle ↗
• https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/using-eagle-schematic ↗
• https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/using-eagle-board-layout ↗
• https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/designing-pcbs-advanced-smd ↗
• http://www.msilverman.me/2010/06/creating-a-new-device-in-eagle/ ↗

Libraries

Having a good set of Eagle part libraries is key to success. Besides the standard libraries, there are some additional libraries that shouldn’t be missing from your collection.

• https://cadsoft.io/resources/libraries/ ↗
• https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Eagle-Library ↗
• https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun-Eagle-Libraries ↗
• https://www.element14.com/community/community/cadsoft_eagle/blog/2015/01/15/the-10-most-popular-cadsoft-eagle-libraries ↗

Creating a top-level folder, e.g. eagle_external_libraries, and adding that to your Libraries Directories path under Options as $EAGLEDIR/lbr:$HOME/Workspace/eagle_external_libraries gives you a single location to add all these gems.

Personal Library

Recently I had to re-collect all these libraries after an unfortunate reinstall. I’ve decided to now start my personal set of libraries ↗, containing basically copies of and newly created or adapted parts for all parts that I use.

Again extending the Libraries path, adding this repository, ...:$HOME/Workspace/eagle_personal_libraries puts everything nicely available at your finger tips.

Notes

There is a lot of details to know about Eagle. Google ↗ is your friend. Here are the ones I had to look up:

Give Symbol Pins the Same Name

Sometimes multiple pins on a part carry the same name (GND, DNC,…). The symbol editor doesn’t allow this. By adding a suffix of the format @x with x a number, the pins have different names, but in the schema representation, these suffixes aren’t visible. E.g. GND@1, GND@2 both become GND. (via Dangerous Prototypes ↗)