[sdiy] Building parts in Eagle

[Jason Tribbeck]

Hi,

> Ive just been looking at some online tutorials, and it doesnt look all that
> difficult, however, my experiance of eagle is that many
> things that should be easy are, indeed, not at all.
> 
> Before i waste a load of time attempting, and then giving up (!) can anyone
> comment as to if it is fairly simple, or if im being
> deluded?

I've done a few myself - to me, they fall into one of two categories:

1) On a grid

2) Gridless

The first one is nice and easy, even if you have a different X to Y grid - simply set up the main grid to the X-axis (or the one with the most number of pins/bits), and then set up the alternate grid to the Y-axis.

Place everything on Y=0, at their respective X positions, and then select the group and move using the alternate grid up/down.

For QFP style packages, I'd generally copy one of the sides, and then rotate 90 degrees it to the next set. And then select the all the pins, and rotate 180 degrees to complete.

The second one is much more complex - sometimes I use the command line method, but most of the time I'll move it roughly to position, and then either go to a finer grid, or use the "Info" button to manually enter the actual coordinates.

Note that it's always worth checking the libraries that are out there to see if your component is present. Although that currently finding the components is a bit of a PITA (I'm in the middle of creating a website in order to try to make component searching easier).
-- 
Jason Tribbeck