Hierarchical schematics and layouts

[Christopher]

How can we do this? I know I could make a library part but that's not the best idea....

[twistedresistor]

Christopher,

EAGLE unfortunately does only support flat hierarchies i.e. off-page connectors. Hierarchies where you can zoom into a part and see what it is made of are not possible.

HTH
twistedresistor

[kripton2035]

you can do it with the free version of diptrace. but not eagle.

[Christopher]

I'm looking for a good cad software that allows me to do this. Eagle is nice but its a bit... limited.

Altium has too many features....

[MarkL]

There aren't hierarchies in Eagle, as others have pointed out.  But you can create a separate schematic and board layout containing the complete design for a sub-system and then use the import function (under "File") to add it to the current design as many times as needed.

The imported schematic shows up as new schematic page(s), and you can click where to place the imported board layout.  To delete the sub-system, delete the page from the schematic.

It's not a very clean solution by any means, but it's better than stuffing it in a library where there's no schematic for that part of the design.

[MacAttak]

Does that count as "multiple schematic pages"? Because if so, then that requires one of the non-free versions of Eagle. Granted the OP didn't say that "free" was a requirement.

[kizzap]

Does that count as "multiple schematic pages"? Because if so, then that requires one of the non-free versions of Eagle. Granted the OP didn't say that "free" was a requirement.

Multiple schematic pages are just a way to have different sheets for each part of the circuit, so you can have say Power on one sheet, MCU on another, etc. If that is what the OP wants then yeah Eagle can do it. Naming Nets is the easiest way to connect each components across sheets.

-kizzap

[MarkL]

Does that count as "multiple schematic pages"? Because if so, then that requires one of the non-free versions of Eagle. Granted the OP didn't say that "free" was a requirement.

True, they didn't say, but I dropped down to the free version and just checked it.

So, yes, import does count as multiple pages, and you're right the free version doesn't allow it: "The Light edition of EAGLE can't perform the requested action!  There are not enough sheets."

Sorry for the hidden gotch-ya.  A better fallback *should* have been to put it on the same sheet.

There's a user contributed "hierarchical_v10.zip" on the CadSoft download area.  I haven't played with it but that's something else to try.

Also up on the web site are ULPs to export your board layout and schematic as scripts.  The light version isn't going to stop you from running a script multiple times to make multiple copies of the same sub-system on the same page.  You'd have to move everything out of the way before running the scripts so things don't get overlayed, and signal name tweaking in the script is probably necessary between invocations so you don't end up with everything in parallel.

I guess no matter how you slice it, Eagle just doesn't do hierarchies.  And the light version has less ways around it.

[poorchava]

If your project is complex enough that it  requires hierarchical design, it's most likely a bad idea to do it in Eagle anyway.