[sdiy] Goodbye Eagle...

[Ben Stuyts]

There’s an open source autorouter for KiCad called FreeRouting. It can be installed from the plugin manager. (I fully agree re: using it for congestion checking and then doing everything by hand.)

KiCad can import Eagle designs, but I cannot comment on the quality of that. From watching the forums I believe it is quite usable.

Ben

> On 31 May 2026, at 12:50, Sarah Thompson <plodger at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> The EAGLE autorouter was useful for exactly one thing: doing a quick route on a board to identify where the congestion is happening. Made it faster to iterate on placement (especially doing very tight boards, and where you have a lot of high pin count packages). I'd still delete the generated routes and finish the board by hand, however.
> 
> I'm not sure I'll really miss EAGLE as-such, it's more nostalgia for a time when I basically lived inside it! Ironically, it was an early Kicad version that didn't have fine enough base resolution that forced me into using EAGLE back in the early 2010s. They fixed that many versions ago, however. 
> 
> On Sun, May 31, 2026 at 9:05 AM Spiros Makris <spirosmakris92 at gmail.com <mailto:spirosmakris92 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> I jumped ship a few years ago when usage of Eagle became part of the fusion subscription (is it still like that? I wonder).
>> I think KiCad is better than eagle in most aspects. The autorouter and bus routing tools were nice, but I guess I'm not in a domain that *needs* them; I'm pretty sure they will eventually be added as native features.
>> 
>> On Thu, 28 May 2026 at 00:24, Ben Stuyts via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org <mailto:synth-diy at synth-diy.org>> wrote:
>>> Oh tease!
>>> 
>>>> On 27 May 2026, at 14:40, Sarah Thompson via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org <mailto:synth-diy at synth-diy.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Kicad is *much* better than it used to be. I'm sorry to see EAGLE go. I've built things with that that have been around the far side of the moon. :-)
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, May 26, 2026 at 8:17 PM charlie <charlie at finitemonkeys.com <mailto:charlie at finitemonkeys.com>> wrote:
>>>>> they did openly announce it was going to be killed off as a standalone product in 2023 when they planned to merge it into fusion. unfortunately the fusion integration is just bad, it looses the speed of working in standalone, but they don't want to hear about it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> pre 8 still works.
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, 26 May 2026 at 06:20, Brother Theo via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org <mailto:synth-diy at synth-diy.org>> wrote:
>>>>>> I got the notification by answering an email about a forum post I made. If it wasn't for that I'd be caught out in June.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> So I migrated to KiCad. Turns out it's not as bad as I remember. I implemented a library and it looks like it will handle BOM creation better than Eagle did.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --timmers
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Tue, May 26, 2026 at 8:18 AM Sean Ellis via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org <mailto:synth-diy at synth-diy.org>> wrote:
>>>>>>> I guess it's not such a bad thing we're being flooded with vibe-coded tools, ain't no-one paying a subscription for those....
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> From: Synth-diy <synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org <mailto:synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org>> on behalf of H.Sergio Alves via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org <mailto:synth-diy at synth-diy.org>>
>>>>>>> Sent: Tuesday, 26 May 2026 2:05 PM
>>>>>>> To: Richie Burnett <rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk <mailto:rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk>>
>>>>>>> Cc: SDIY List <synth-diy at synth-diy.org <mailto:synth-diy at synth-diy.org>>
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: [sdiy] Goodbye Eagle...
>>>>>>>  
>>>>>>> It’s kinda taking the piss now… most companies doing this… why not disable the authentication on the server and shut it down? Make so people can still use what they pay for! I truly hate subscriptions…
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> On Tue, 26 May 2026 at 13:02, Richie Burnett <rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk <mailto:rburnett at richieburnett.co.uk>> wrote:
>>>>>>> 4 months isn't much notice period to get things migrated to another
>>>>>>> platform!
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Also I don't see why it would just stop running after June 2026 because it
>>>>>>> runs offline.  I can understand that you might not be able to activate a new
>>>>>>> installation though.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -Richie,
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>> From: Neil Johnson via Synth-diy
>>>>>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2026 11:46 AM
>>>>>>> To: SDIY List
>>>>>>> Subject: [sdiy] Goodbye Eagle...
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Looks like Eagle is toast...
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Eagle-can-be-used-after-the-end-of-life.html?msockid=3dcaf17f85a6605b343be4b0840e61be
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Such a shame, it got a lot of folks into DIY board making.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Neil

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