[sdiy] Eagle for PCB Layout

[Jason Tribbeck]

I also switched from Eagle to Altium (although the switch was because I
became a hardware engineer at work, and they used Altium).

It took a month or so for me to change from swearing /at/ Altium to
swearing /by/ Altium (and that was using it at work pretty much
constantly). It was a bit of a pain that the company put me through an
Altium training course about a month after I'd grown very familiar with it.

The (as mentioned) requirement to update the PCB from the schematic took a
bit of getting used to, but it makes sense in a larger organisation where
you have people who are dedicated to schematic capture, and others for PCB
layout (as we had - although I'm fluent in both).

I still have Eagle 7.5 professional (Schematic + Layout - I never bothered
with Autorouting), which I use for old projects (although Altium does have
an importer).

Unfortunately (and, in some respects, fortunately), I was let go from my
previous job, but they let me keep the Altium licence (since they decided
not to make any more hardware) - and all the soldering kit they had (which
was bought for me about 18 months beforehand). So I'm still using Altium at
home - but that's mainly because of the 3D visualisation. Slight problem is
that I'm stuck with 17.0 unless I spend $$$.

The only thing that I still have problems with is getting a PDF exported at
1:1 scale which imports nicely into my illustration program which I use to
stick logos and merge several PCBs to a single file so I can easily expose
them all a the same time. For some reason, while it looks okay on the
screen, it just changes the scale. Eagle worked perfectly for this (so much
so that I created a simple key press to set all the options to export as a
PDF for top and bottom layers).

Other annoyances with Altium 17.0 (when compared with Eagle 7.5):

- Net labels aren't automatically named to the net you click on
- The drag of several components in schematic often causes oddities with
the wires
- Dragging a package on the PCB doesn't move its connected traces
- Doesn't work very well with multiple monitors
- Searching libraries is a pain

On Sat, 30 Jun 2018 at 00:14 MTG <grant at musictechnologiesgroup.com> wrote:

>
> On 6/29/2018 3:48 PM, AlanP wrote:
> >
> > I've got an Eagle 7.5.0 licence for 160x100mm board size, and intend to
> > never ever upgrade to the subscription model.
> >
>
> I wonder if Eagle will offer a perpetual license version?  I hate the
> subscription model too. All that old software that the retrokids are
> playing with today... that should be a neat trick for the next
> generation with no media and no way to get the license to activate.
>
> GB
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