Category: Electronics
Soar like an...
Dec 7, 08:41 AM
Eagle.
Its a electronic schematic and PCB design program. And its FREE
I’ve played with it a bit in the past but have been using it a fair bit in the last month.
It’s a bit to get your head around at first, but once you do, BOY is it a powerful piece of software.
A few things I have learned:
- Organise your files from the start. Folder structures are GOOD.
- Name EVERY possible “net” in the schematic you can.
- If you don’t have a part in the library you need, MAKE IT! It’s very very easy after you have had a few goes.
- When designing the layout of the board, always have a ruler close by to physically see dimensions.
- Don’t place SMD parts too close to holes, as you may when soldering, accidentally fill the hole with solder.
- If you are new, like me, forget what pro’s say and use the autorouter, but then, un-route it all and have a go at routing easy stuff, and use a ground plane.
- If your having trouble, use the autorouter, I usually do, but then fine tune all the wires so they are fully optimized.
- Use the autorouter with a grid of say, 5 or 10 mil, not 50mil.
- Expect weird problems, for example I used to use the change layer command lots to move parts to the bottom layer, for some reason now it will not let me do that… weird.
That’s about all the tips for now.
One other thing though, eagle creates all these backup files as you work, which is nice of it, but it doesn’t tend to delete them after a while, manually deleting them is a pain though.
Maybe VB.NET can help me with that.
Still getting used to this Textile thing, its pretty cool.
Later!