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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday December 27 2017, @05:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the Babelfish-for-PCBs dept.

Cadsoft's Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (EAGLE) is an ECAD (Electronic Computer-aided design), a software product for designing printed circuit boards. As that product has a demo/freeware version which is adequate for many users, as well as having a reasonable price structure for more-capable versions, and being cross-platform, it had considerable popularity.

A year ago, Autodesk acquired Cadsoft Computer GmbH and changed the licensing of the product to a subscription model. Since then, many users of EAGLE have been seeking a path away from that EULAware app. Many have moved to (FOSS) KiCAD, a project started by French academics which has gained developer support from personnel at CERN.

A sticking point for those wanting to transition to a new tool is the projects previously developed using the old tool and saved in the native format of that package.

Hackaday reports

There is a desire to port those innumerable Eagle board layouts and libraries to other PCB design packages. This tool does just that.

The tool is an extension of pcb-rnd, a FOSS tool for circuit board editing [itself, a fork of gEDA's "PCB" module], and this update massively extends support for Eagle boards and libraries.

As an example, VK5HSE loaded up an Eagle .brd file of a transceiver, selected a pin header, and exported that component to a KiCAD library. It worked the first time. For another experiment, the ever popular TV-B-Gone .brd file was exported directly to pcb-rnd.

This is a mostly-complete solution for Eagle-to-KiCAD, Eagle-to-Autotrax, and Eagle-to-gEDA-PCB, with a few minimal caveats relating to copper pours and silkscreen--nothing that can't be dealt with if you're not mindlessly using the tool.

While it must be noted that most Open Hardware projects fit inside a 80 [sq.cm] board area, and can therefore be opened and modified with the free-to-use version of Autodesk's Eagle, this is a very capable tool to turn Eagle boards and libraries into designs that can be built with FOSS tools.

Previous: Cadsoft EAGLE is Now Subscription-Only
CERN is Getting Serious About Development of the KiCAD App for Designing Printed Circuits


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:30AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:30AM (#614652)

    Yup. I'm not surprised to see you in this (meta)thread.

    We've discussed EAGLE and Cadsoft's business model before. [soylentnews.org]
    Multiple times, in fact.
    I noted that the original company had invoked an occult DRM mechanism in order to deal with pirates--and made that a collective punishment thing which harmed some legit users. [electrondepot.com]

    I dropped that brand when I quit Windoze.
    You were too invested to follow suit.

    my work is held hostage [by the EULAware folks]

    There is a LONG comments section attached to TFA.
    One guy said that his company forbids machines with work product on them onto the internet.
    Autodesk's little subscription model is an absolute deal breaker for him.

    this Soylent News story is of great interest to me. I will jump ship over this

    I was pretty sure I'd hear that from you.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:43AM (#614656)

    Oops. That was in a related page.
    EAGLE: One Year Later [hackaday.com]
    102 comments to date.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]