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Eagle: One Year Later - Transcript 1

A event log for Eagle: One Year Later

We're checking in with Eagle CAD to hear about new features added in the past year and to learn what's coming in 2018

lutetiumLutetium 12/15/2017 at 21:240 Comments



Sophi Kravitz : Matt B, please tell us who you are and why you are here

Sophi Kravitz : :D

technolomaniac : ok...hi. Im matt - aka technolomaniac...I run the EAGLE, Tinkercad and part of the Fusion 360 teams at Autodesk.

technolomaniac : before that, I worked at Supplyframe who owns HaD (full disclosure) and before that, at Altium

technolomaniac : for many...many...many years

technolomaniac : why am I here? just to hang out. I make projects here. I share stuff here. I like this crowd. even when they hate me. it's more my peeps that say...EETimes.

wb8wka : Is there audio/video with this?

technolomaniacthat = than

technolomaniac : nah...

technolomaniac :but I will share copious pictures

Frank Buss : I don't hate you, you are the reason I switched to KiCad and I thank you for that :-)

technolomaniac : great! glad you found it does what you wanted!

Sophi Kravitz : @wb8wka this is text based.

technolomaniac : I have zero against KiCAD

technolomaniac : I think it's pretty awesome to see them disrupting the market.

technolomaniac : that's creating opportunity more than eroding it

wb8wka : Love eagle but don't want to get my keyboard greasy (lunch time)

Sophi Kravitz : People with questions, please put them in the comment here: https://hackaday.io/event/28510-eagle-one-year-later

technolomaniac : 10 years ago, nobody would have said a big company would use EAGLE much less an open course tool

technolomaniac : course = source

technolomaniac : so to see that transformation is super exciting

Sophi Kravitz : @technolomaniac OK if I start posting some of the questions ?

technolomaniac : and to see companies like Altium and Cadence trying to figure out what's happening in this world is incredible

technolomaniac : yes'm

Frank Buss : I worked for a middle size company who used Eagle for like a complex 8 layer board

Sophi KravitzQ from @James Lewis : There have been some improvements in the UX, such as the new icons. (They look great.) However, EAGLE still feels like a 30 year old command-line driven CAD program, with a GUI slapped on top. Is there a plan or roadmap to keep a similar UI, but modernize the UX?

technolomaniac : oh yes. HUGELY so.

technolomaniac : the next MAJOR release is all about setting that flag

technolomaniacso not 8.x but whatever comes after

Frank Buss : but don't remove the command line

technolomaniac : so we will make big improvements on UI/UX and usability with an eye for how we also dont make the thing super complicated to drive.

technolomaniac : no no...the command line is awesome.

technolomaniac : I dont want to take that out.

Sophi Kravitz : love the command line

Edwin Robledo : Command Line rocks!!

technolomaniac : Autocad tried that years ago and it was a disaster

Sophi Kravitz : it's so nice to use mouse in one hand and type with other

technolomaniac : Autodesk knows the command line well.

technolomaniac :we added autocomplete recently and that's something not many folks picked up on.

Benchoff : I've lost two escape keys to autodesk already

James Lewis : I am liking the autocomplete.

Sophi Kravitz : Q from me: can you tell us how the ULPs work?

Sophi Kravitz : under the hood and all that

ben.leduc-mills has joined this room.9:12 PM

technolomaniac : HAHAHA...sure

technolomaniac : its just interpreted code which is then parsed to generate a series of commands in an event loop. difference is, that it also allows you to maintain some sense of "state" with variables as it executes.

Edwin Robledo : This is a good detailed document regarding ULP: http://eagle.autodesk.com/eagle/download/2285

technolomaniac : so you write code, we interpret the commands from that, we hook the event handling / state machine that is EAGLE and then queue up all of the events

Sophi Kravitz : there are a lot of them

technolomaniac : oh yeah...that was something which I had to come tor grips with: ULPs are first-class citizens in EAGEL

Sophi Kravitz : are you writing new ones?

Frank Buss : just curious, was Eagle written itself with this language? I always liked how stable the program was, nearly never crashed up to my version 6

technolomaniac : no no....EAGLE is all C++

technolomaniac : and @Sophi Kravitz yes!

csann : I'm not familiar with Eagle. What does it cost for hobbyists and/or small business? Is it like Fusion 360 - free for under $100K? Does it integrate with Fusion 360?

technolomaniac : in fact we just updated the LIbrary Export ULP which was little better than a disaster in the past

davedarko : there's a price list on their site, just saying

Jorge Garcia : @Sophi Kravitz Additionally the new ULP and SCR dialogs show you the documentation for the ULPs so it's much easier to figure out what they do.

technolomaniac : free for hobbyists. totally integrated with fusion (getting better there also) and then two paid tiers - $100 & $300

Edwin Robledo :

technolomaniacSomeone asked about: Where do you see Eagle being position compared to Kicad, Altium, Cadence? Hobbist vs professional spectrum

Jorge Garcia : @technolomaniac You mean 100 and 500 a year right?

technolomaniac : ahh yah!

Jorge Garcia : :)

technolomaniac : sorry

technolomaniac : Where do you see Eagle being position compared to Kicad, Altium, Cadence? Hobbist vs professional spectrum

technolomaniac : So i think the market is changing in a big way.

technolomaniac : if you saw the interview on Ask and Engineer wed, it was interesting what Limor said...She and I and folks like all of "us" (my boss is the guy that founded instructables) are the inmates running the asylum

technolomaniac :so the "full product" view is transforming this space to include electronics, mcad, etc

technolomaniac : and we need to evolve with it or die.

technolomaniac :hard when your only product that generates revenue is $10K +

davedarkohow comes there is this huge gap between Euro (130pa) and USD(100pa) prices?

Radomir Dopieralski : however, usually those parts are done by different people

ted : the Ask an Engineer w/ adafruit/technolomaniac, I need to watch it too, fyi link for others:

davedarko : thx

Sophi Kravitz : can we talk about footprints?

technolomaniac : but just as people dont pay $10K for compilers any more...the pressure is on to transform the space with lower cost tools that do more.

technolomaniac : sure...you need one?

technolomaniac : ;)

Sophi Kravitz : haha always

Sophi Kravitz : I need an easier way to make them

davedarko : is this scripted? :D

Sophi Kravitz : no

technolomaniac : @Radomir Dopieralski yes and no. however either way, a tightly coupled workflow is of benefit all round

technolomaniac : @davedarko no no...I'm just THAT good. :)

technolomaniac : BAHAHAHAHAHA

technolomaniac : (total joke._

Sophi Kravitz : what is the thought behind making the footprint tools the way they are with requiring calculations at every step?

Jorge Garcia : @Sophi Kravitz There are ULPs that help with component creation. But we have something in the works that will help with this. I'll let Matt address it.

technolomaniac : well we are changing all of that

Sophi Kravitz : @davedarko I've lost the sophiRobot

technolomaniac : as @Jorge Garcia said, there are ULPs that make that better

technolomaniac : but I showed this earlier...

Jarrett : any plans to support Python scripting?

Jarrett : that's a killer feature of Fusion 360 imo

technolomaniac :

Jarrett : (I use SolifWorks for work, and the VB scripting is killing me)

technolomaniac : this sort of footprint calculator is long overdue

Jim Jones has joined this room.9:22 PM

Sophi Kravitz : I remember when you were working on that

Sophi Kravitz : when will it be ready? :D

technolomaniac :

Jorge Garcia : Matt, you are always giving away too much... You have to keep some suspense dude. :D

technolomaniac : soon. it's really freaking close!

ted : /me wants to sign up for the beta of that

technolomaniac : @Jorge Garcia hahahaha!

technolomaniac : indeed!

Benchoff : bruh you should have seen what I saw

Joshua Vasquez has joined this room.9:23 PM

technolomaniac : HAHAHA ...yah - @Benchoff got a peak at some cool stuff!

Brain Seabird has joined this room.9:23 PM

Andrew Sowa : engineers often give out more information than they should . That's why they get banned from trade show booths.

technolomaniac : but that calc also produces the IPC compliant FP and the 3D model and then does the alignemnt

technolomaniac : @Andrew Sowa seriously

technolomaniac : they say the ship leaks from the top...and I guess as far as eagle goes, that's me.

Sophi Kravitz : that's a nice calculator

technolomaniac : but I get excited! and I want to share what we're going to solicit feedback

technolomaniac : So what's the deal with CircuitMaker? Do you still have tendrils in that team and any idea WTF is going on with Altium? (This probably relates to Upverter too)

technolomaniac : saw that question...

Andrew Sowa : I feel guilty using now IPC custom footprints so auto generated is good

technolomaniac : not sure. I think circuitmaker was a bet on the maker community but I havent seen it take off.

Andrew Sowa :non*

technolomaniac : I dont fault them. as I mentioend about KiCAD...anything that promises to disrupt the 10K tools with something awesome is a welcome additon IMO

technolomaniac : it serves the interest of the community

technolomaniac : same thing happened with compilers...who pays $5K for Keil any more?

technolomaniac : nothing against Keil. Great compiler, great company.

technolomaniac : but the market dynamics are shifting

Sophi Kravitz : they have a hobby free version

technolomaniac : why is it so hard to include a logo?! (eg a png)

Sophi Kravitz : but it's space limited

technolomaniac : great quesiton --

Jarrett : yeah, CM hasn't see an update in over a year

Jorge Garcia : So does IAR, people still shell out 4k for the pro version.

technolomaniac : because it doesnt support splines?

technolomaniac : and because the original polygon tools were not that great.

technolomaniac : but that's coming too

technolomaniac : SVG to PCB

technolomaniac : I would honestly love to be the first PCB tool to properly support splines

Radomir Dopieralski : um, Fritzing?

Adam Oakley : eww

technolomaniac : for PCB?

Radomir Dopieralski : sure

technolomaniac : let me know how that goes.

Radomir Dopieralski : did a bunch, like #Blinka

Frank Buss : you sure? isn't it just bezier curves?

Radomir Dopieralski : goes very well

Radomir Dopieralski : ok, I'm uneducated, what's the difference?

Jarrett : arguably PCBModE does splines :P

Jarrett : ...because Inkscape is the front end

Andrew Sowa : with this svg tool be able to dynamically resize once converted or is it a static scale?

technolomaniac : ahh that's cool

technolomaniac : I love the geometry there...

technolomaniac : @Andrew Sowa that's the goal

technolomaniac : wrt to python for scripting...it's interesting, we just had a discussion about this last night

technolomaniac : I'm all for it.

technolomaniac : ULP is confusing and suboptimal

James Lewis : python++

Frank Buss : @Radomir Dopieralski http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-bezier-curve-and-vs-b-spline-curve/ basically Splines are more "round" and "natural"

Andrew Sowa : pcb art may get easier

Jarrett : yeah!

technolomaniac : but we have some refactoring to do to make that happen...stay tuned on that. I like python. but EAGLE Is a classic monolith and we need to separate components before make that happen.

technolomaniac : my team wrote the spline tools for Fusion.

Jarrett : tbh I am resistant to learning ULPs because it's yet another learning curve that doesn't get me anything that other languages don't already have

Stephen : python scripting would be awesome!

technolomaniac : just an FYI...

Andrew Sowa : i often use fusion for complex outlines

Jarrett : for example, I wrote a Python script that converted bitmaps to EAGLE 7 format directly

technolomaniac : @Stephen I really think Python is something we should do. but it aint easy. a fair bit of refactoring first but we will get there.

Jarrett : even though I think there was a ULP for it

Frank Buss : I wrote a spline Applet, too back in the days when Java was popular :-)

http://www.frank-buss.de/spline.html

Jarrett : but the python was straightforward

Stephen : I believe that. I can try to be patient :)

Jorge Garcia : For those who want python https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Swoop

Jarrett : (sidenote: XML file format is awesome as well)

technolomaniac : @Jarrett glad you like it!

technolomaniac : we're pushing the open format as much as possible

Jorge Garcia : I love that modules name. It will hold you over until we figure out how to get Python in.

Jarrett : I, uh, might have used EAGLE format as an intermediate step to CircuitMaker, because the EAGLE importer was really good, but bitmap importers for CM don't exist

technolomaniac : so for example, with the library tools I showed earlier...we are planning to make importers for other formats and resolve everything to EAGLE XML (largely because everyone can read it...even if you dont use EAGLE)

technolomaniac : Yah...not sure why. Altium can do it. They have that code. They just held back.

technolomaniac : meh.

Jorge Garcia : @Jarrett nothing to be ashamed of dude. You still used EAGLE and the format is still EAGLE.

Frank Buss : I never used Fritzing, but looks like it has only bezier curves:

http://blog.fritzing.org/2011/08/18/fritzing-gets-the-bends/bezier/

I guess real spline curves in a PCB editor would be something novel

Jorge Garcia : We are happy as long as people use the tool.

technolomaniac : You cant hold back features and then expect to win. That's why the board size constraint is probably the only real thing you can hold back, along with layer count.

jviwjfwi

technolomaniac : Any plans to go to a could file system like Fusion 360?

technolomaniac : Nah...not really. I think we can defintiely have a cloud representation of the data.

technolomaniac : and we will...so I'm not being coy there.

technolomaniac : we will have EAGLE data in the cloud one day...

technolomaniac : but a) that should be optional

Sophi Kravitz : oh thank g-d

technolomaniac : and b) that should be something that adds real value

Sophi Kravitz : if you can't separate from the cloud, especially with slow internet speeds everywhere, please don't do it

technolomaniac : so like visualizing a schematic in the browser by someone who is not the engineer is cool

Frank Buss : https://i.imgur.com/R5UM2hb.png

IMGUR

Jorge Garcia : Whenever you use ECAD-MCAD EAGLE is on the cloud. :)

technolomaniac : yah...the cloud is there for sharing, socialization, community stuff like shared libs, etc.

Jim Jones : The could on fusion has been nice for us as a company using their team hubs. Everyone has the files who needs them

Radomir Dopieralski : @Frank Buss I have that t-shirt

technolomaniac : @Jim Jones and I totally agree with that model

Jim Jones : its nice for collaborative work and version tracking

technolomaniac : likewise, if someone can share a link to a PCB and then use a derivative web service to produce mfg files from it...that is cool

Jorge Garcia : It's good to objectively discuss what the cloud offers. Sharing, collaboration, larger computing resources are the big three in my mind.

technolomaniac : so e.g. you could right click a PCB and say "generate gerbers" if you were a board house

technolomaniac : or "generate a bom from this schematic"

technolomaniac : because the person buying parts - unless it's you - shouldn't have to open EAGLE to get a BOM

Jim Jones : A work around for me is to just keep my eagle files in dropbox for now

Madjewelr has joined this room.9:41 PM

davedarko : that's neat for chinese clone factories too :)

Jorge Garcia : @technolomaniac That's right, as a good engineer you should give them the BOM.

Jorge Garcia : :)

Jim Jones : but yes, online eco-system would be benefical to the persons who are not the creator

Andrew Sowa : are there any tools for penalization so I don't have to offload that to a board house?

technolomaniac : @davedarko oh yeah, for sure! cant wait to see what my product will look like on shelves before I make it!

Radomir Dopieralski : hmmm, a pcb design wiki

davedarko : I'd like that as a service :)

technolomaniac : @Andrew Sowa not yet. but there's plans for that.

technolomaniac : @Radomir Dopieralski that would be awesome. so much tribal knowledge to be shared.

technolomaniac : but I think we probably dont want to be the ones to own that...because it feels like it crosses some imaginary boundary that the community would be upset if it was hosted by us.

Andrew Sowa : I know some to all to FAE on integrity, would that be to crazy to ask for? It plausible since fusion has simulation

davedarko : I'd love to see something like "your data lines on usb have a difference in length of 5cm" in the DRC

technolomaniac : oh just wait dude.

technolomaniac : just freaking wait.

technolomaniac : :) . you have no idea @davedarko

davedarko : exactly :)

Benchoff : Aaaay, another question here from @Andrew Sowa : are there any tools for penalization so I don't have to offload that to a board house?

Benchoff : which is relevant to my interests

technolomaniac :

Jorge Garcia : @davedarko The meander tool gives you that info currently.

technolomaniac : I'll let you chew on that for a bit.

Sophi Kravitz : which one is that?

technolomaniac : MUAAAAHHAHAHA

davedarko : hahahaha exactly Sophie

Sophi Kravitz : seriously cannot stand just having names for icons

davedarko : whops, -e

Sophi Kravitz : there need to be a guide (for all software)

Jorge Garcia : @Benchoff Nothing built into EAGLE. However the re is a python library you could use to make the panel. I believe you guys have written about it before.

Frank Buss : that's the nice thing in open source projects, you can always test the latest things and they are all public

davedarko : thanks to adafruit I know of the length command that I always have to regoogle again

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