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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


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  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 27 2017, @06:11PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday December 27 2017, @06:11PM (#614813)

    I've seen lots of hobbyists and engineers on their own time using EAGLE, despite the availability of KiCAD and gEDA. I used EAGLE many, many years ago, but quickly switched to KiCAD because of the lock-in and EAGLE's terrible limitations on the free version: why bother with that, and have to pay for a license, when there's a perfectly good alternative in the FOSS world?

    But all those hobbyists doggedly stuck with EAGLE, and had no interest in FOSS alternatives that I advocated. Personally, I don't think these conversion tools should exist: these idiots should have to stick with EAGLE, despite any price increases the company desires to force, and if they want to switch, they should have to do it all by hand. They made their beds, now let them lie in them.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @08:44PM (#614867)

    I agree with your general sentiment.
    Yeah, the longer you stay with a proprietary app and its closed file formats and maximize-profits model, the deeper you allow yourself to sink into the ooze and the harder it is to get yourself out.

    IIRC, it was Protel (another proprietary app) which many folks liked specifically because of its broad importing abilities.

    Besides gEDA and KiCAD, TFA/TFS mention AutoTRAX (a proprietary app) and this tool's ability to convert EAGLE files to that app's format.

    It will be interesting to see how many other non-subscriptionware apps which Free Software pcb-rnd will come to support among its conversions.

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