Eagle is horrible software

[liquibyte]

I think one of the things to also consider, which most people don't, is that Eagle runs natively in Linux where Diptrace, Altium, and the rest don't.  Geda is uninteresting as a program outright.  Kicad is probably going to get there one day but not today.  I tried building from source and gave up when even building the custom toolchain didn't work out well.  I think Diptrace will run in Wine, however Altium won't even install.

The Starr stuff is awesome and I use his default components instead of the defaults that come with Eagle out of the box if there is a choice.

As for measuring, there is Gridrunner which is a nice tool.  There are two versions 20cm measured from the end and 20cm measured from the middle. I recently used these to help me lay out a front panel and they were extremely useful.  It would be trivial to make one of these using imperial measurements though it would be time consuming.

[miceuz]

I'd like to add one for Kicad. Sure it's ugly and has it's own kinks, but overall it's a pretty capable software.

I was hesitating to switch from Eagle to Kicad for some time as I was pretty comfortable in Eagle workflow, learned all the key bindings, etc, but I wanted to use an open source package for open source designs I do. Suffice to say, I grit my teeth now when I have to fire up eagle to revise an old design.

For one thing Kicad workflow allows to work on schematics without knowing what footprints you will use. Eagle makes you to design the whole part (schematics and footprint) or use something that's in the library and replace it later - I hate that. I usually start without knowing how the final board will be manufactured, what parts I will be using, hell, I just want a diode there and I don't know the package yet! In my opinion, Kicad's schematic tool is superior to Eagle one, don't know, just a feeling, it's easier to move stuff around and change pin locations in symbols for easier routing.

PCB routing is as bad as in Eagle, but at least Kicad stays frank with you - I'm dumb and i don't know how to do it. Move/rotate a part in eagle - all tracks connected to that part get screwed up (that was the problem the OP stumbled on) Kicad just leaves tracks unconnected. One nice feature of kicad - if you redraw a part of the track, it will remove the old part. Keyboard shortcuts are somewhat "shorter" in kicad - delete deletes the whole net, backspace - a segment of a track. Another thing I like is that it's really easy and fast to get to footprint editing.

The thing that irritates me in Eagle the most is grouping and working with the grouped stuff - that's plain retarded. Kicad grouping in PCB tool is pretty poor, but in schematics editor it's far more superior to Eagle one.

I didn't use "push and shove" routing for a real design yet, but it looks promising.

Kicad pcb tool has a working 3D display, eagle does not have it.

In general Kicad has "programmers have designed this piece of software" written all around it. I'm a programmer myself by dayjob and by education, so it's pretty easy to follow the line of thought for me. They've used a lot of "programmer like" shortcuts to add more functionality and more control at expense of clarity and user interface. You can see that clearly when importing a netlist in the PCB tool for example.

[ajb]

I completely agree about parts management in Eagle vs KiCad.  I use Eagle at work (was purchased before I started, but hopefully when some money comes available we'll move to something else), and I find it's really not well suited to production work.  I think part of its popularity comes from the fact that its biggest weaknesses aren't really exposed until you try to deal with a fairly large (in terms of part count/complexity) design.  Or want to panelize something.

For instance, it's annoying to swap packages on a dozen resistors, but something else entirely to swap a hundred resistors.  The ability to add arbitrary attributes to components is nice, but there's no way to do it in bulk, or to import attributes from an external file, or to export those extra attributes in one partslist.  The steps required to duplicate a portion of a PCB layout are ridiculous: create the initial schematic and layout, close the board file, copy & paste the schematic block, close the schematic and open the board, copy and paste the layout, then open the schematic, THEN MANUALLY RECONCILE EVERY COMPONENT/NET NAME BETWEEN THE SCHEMATIC AND BOARD.  WTF? If you want to copy and paste something from one design to another you have to open two separate instances of the application (and then keep track of which control panel goes with which open schematic).  There's not even a way, AFAICT, to natively export proper placement information!  A lot of these shortcomings can be worked around through ULPs (bom-ex is a good one), but it's a real pain to have to find a ULP to do something that really ought to be baked into the application.

For all of that, though, Eagle is at least stable and relatively bug free in my experience, and I've had a few too many problems with buggy/bizarre behavior with KiCAD to start using it at work.  I do really like the way that KiCAD does manual routing, though, with the ability to snap to clearances between features, and displaying two trace segments while each mouse click only commits the first.  Also the net class system is handy.

[mamalala]

That last time I tried Eagle (3 years ago), it didn't even have a measuring tool, as in ctrl-m in Altium and you can get dx/dy etc between two points. How the coders manage to miss a basic feature like that is beyond me.

Uh, it does. The command is "mark", where you set a reference point. It then shows you the distance between that point and the actual cursor, as well as the angle relative to it. The icon for that command is in the second top row of the toolbox, on the right.

You would have found that if you looked into the manual

Greetings,

Chris

[mamalala]

A major difference between Eagle and some other packages is that it's UI is a mainly modal interface. This means you first select a mode, and then apply that to whatever you need to. Other packages work the other way around, you first select the object(s) and then apply the operation(s).

The former is pretty much what almost all CAD packages used to do (and most still do), while the latter is something you see in stuff like word processing (select text -> change font, etc..) If you are used to the "old ways of CAD" you will get used to Eagle pretty quickly. However, if you never (or rarely) used such a paradigm, you will have a rather hard time initially. But then, each new program has a learning curve for the user.

Greetings,

Chris

[Zero999]

I agree, Eagle is horrible software. I've used other CAD programs such as AutoCAD which do selection that way and it isn't that which bothers me. Altium is definitely the best but of course there's no point in comparing it with Eagle. I've tried KiCad which is much better than Eagle and is great for hobby use.

[Corporate666]

That last time I tried Eagle (3 years ago), it didn't even have a measuring tool, as in ctrl-m in Altium and you can get dx/dy etc between two points. How the coders manage to miss a basic feature like that is beyond me.

Uh, it does. The command is "mark", where you set a reference point. It then shows you the distance between that point and the actual cursor, as well as the angle relative to it. The icon for that command is in the second top row of the toolbox, on the right.

You would have found that if you looked into the manual

Greetings,

Chris

Mark isn't a measurement tool and using it as such as a hack/workaround that shouldn't be necessary.  A real, professional tool should have the ability to select more than one item and tell you the distance between them.  Mark can be used if you first check the location of one part, then type in a mark at that address, then look at the relative values of the other... but that's something one could have done by just subtracting the X/Y coordinates of the two items in the first place... and it doesn't help when you need to check a diagonal distance (not without doing some math, anyway).

I think CadSoft (Newark now, I guess) realize these limitations because they are adding features which should have been there all along.  The latest version of Eagle does include a measurement/dimension tool.

I think everyone agrees that Eagle is shit.  It's not that there is so much that Eagle can't do - it's just that so much basic functionality is provided only through workarounds/hacks/tweaks that inevitably cause much hassle to the user.  Some examples - multi layer boards (so many issues), support for multiple pads connected to one schematic pin, non-standard shaped pads, library management, changing things like annular rings/isolation distances, importing CAD drawings and sooo much more.  Some of this is very basic functionality and it's obscene that Eagle doesn't do it, or makes the user jump through hoops to achieve it.  You still can't just import a CAD outline into Eagle without using a crappy 3-rd party tool that doesn't even support splines and arcs correctly.  Crazy!

[Mysion]

As some one who started out with Dip Trace this thread makes me very happy! Now I'm certain I made the right choice.
It's due to rants like these that lead me to choose dip Trace in the first place.

I have no experience with Eagle but Dip Trace is fairly intuitive.  The first board I made with it was a break out board with two SMD sensor's. One of them was an accelerometer with a really odd LGA 15 foot print. I found it impressive that a novice user like my self, could go in and be able to create the weird pattern correctly with no prior experience with any PCB design program. 

[Royce]

A major difference between Eagle and some other packages is that it's UI is a mainly modal interface. This means you first select a mode, and then apply that to whatever you need to. Other packages work the other way around, you first select the object(s) and then apply the operation(s).

The former is pretty much what almost all CAD packages used to do (and most still do), while the latter is something you see in stuff like word processing (select text -> change font, etc..) If you are used to the "old ways of CAD" you will get used to Eagle pretty quickly. However, if you never (or rarely) used such a paradigm, you will have a rather hard time initially. But then, each new program has a learning curve for the user.

Greetings,

Chris

I started with Eagle and when I found Diptrace, converted immediately. It was issues like you describe. The mode/operation then target is a hold over from before the mouse! But there is other nonsense too. I grouped some objects together and then poked at the GUI for 15+ minutes looking for ungroup. I ultimately had to google it. It's called "smash" in Eagle. Senseless!

Good 'user experience' doesn't mean hewing to 40 year old user interface standards. There is tremendous value to modern GUI workflow standards like those published by Microsoft and Apple. Those standards make software more intuitive AND the basic workflow is continually reinforced in the course of interacting with most modern programs of any stripe.

I want to study the art of making electronics. I do not want to study the art of using a tool that is used to make electronics. Tools are supposed to help me, not be a problem domain of their own.

Diptrace isn't perfect in this regard, but it is a damn sight better than Eagle.

[Q-Kernel]

I agree with most of the comments. Eagle is strange, it takes a long time to get used to it, DipTrace is the best low-cost choice and Altium is by far the best. By the way Eagle is not very cheap. As soon if you want to do something bigger it is actually expensive

my 2ct

[DerekG]

Eagle is strange, it takes a long time to get used to it.

I note many of the respondents say that Eagle is "strange", "difficult", "hard to learn" etc.

Much of this is because we have grown up with operating systems developed in the USA. We therefore expect other programs & their menus to operate in the same way. Eagle has been developed in Germany & they often have a different perspective on how things should operate.

Probably, if we grew up in Germany, we would not find the menu system so difficult to master.

DipTrace is the best low-cost choice and Altium is by far the best. By the way Eagle is not very cheap. As soon if you want to do something bigger it is actually expensive

DipTrace is a good bottom-to-mid-end package, generally much easier to master than KiCAD, Design Spark, Eagle etc.

You are quite correct in saying that if "you want to do something bigger (Eagle) is actually quite expensive". You have hit the nail right on the head.

If you keep your board size under 160mm x 100mm, the cost of the Eagle schematic + layout + autorouter is US$820. When you compare this to the power & ease of use of Proteus, Eagle is just not in the running.

In fact, Proteus is a strong contender against DipTrace if you stay under 2000 pins & don't need the auto-place function.

Proteus:

500 pin   US$248
1000 pin US$487
2000 pin US$652

I use both Altium & DipTrace for work. I have 24 years of learning with Protel/Altium. I have no idea where Proteus was 24 years ago, but if I were starting out now, choosing Proteus would save me many thousands of dollars & many hours of learning time.

[AndyC_772]

I agree, it's an odd argument given that the market for PCs is global and we've all grown up using the same operating systems.

[Corporate666]

I note many of the respondents say that Eagle is "strange", "difficult", "hard to learn" etc.

Much of this is because we have grown up with operating systems developed in the USA. We therefore expect other programs & their menus to operate in the same way. Eagle has been developed in Germany & they often have a different perspective on how things should operate.

Probably, if we grew up in Germany, we would not find the menu system so difficult to master.

I don't agree with that.  The 'standard' GUI is not the standard because it is an American invention, but because the companies who develop it (Microsoft and Apple) spend millions of dollars on research and development on their GUI's to be the most easy to use and powerful.  For a company like CadSoft to think they can do a better job and completely go against the sum of all the research and collective experience of billions of computer users is a recipe for disaster.

In the case of Eagle, it is as clunky and frumpy as it is because it's patches on top of workarounds on top of kludges on top of band-aids.  At this point, it would be a huge task to totally re-write it.  And now that people are used to its quirky workflow, they would probably squeal if it was changed.

[hans]

Eagle is strange, it takes a long time to get used to it.

I note many of the respondents say that Eagle is "strange", "difficult", "hard to learn" etc.

Much of this is because we have grown up with operating systems developed in the USA. We therefore expect other programs & their menus to operate in the same way. Eagle has been developed in Germany & they often have a different perspective on how things should operate.

Probably, if we grew up in Germany, we would not find the menu system so difficult to master.

 
Sorry, but thats sounds so unreasonable to me. I'm Dutch (which is close to Germany, if that matters), should I now like the interface work on any (oldschool) Dutch program? There is also software that just has a downright horrible interface. I think Eagle is one of them.

Why it's now downright horrible, because back in the day this is how things were done. We would singletask on our PC's, and we had to use all these menu's to get things done. But we are in the 2000s for 14 years now, and Eagle stuck with it forever just like it sticks with a lack of features & information about the design. There are so many obvious things missing from Eagle:
- Overhaul the UI aspect; use a "rich" UI element that interprets dragging stuff around by itself & introduce stuff like clarify selection
- Measurement tool
- Net names in PCB
- Edit individual pins/pads on components in the PCB, not via "a copy of a copy of a library of a copied library edition + where did I leave that editted component?"-issue
- Configurable DRC connectivity matrix
- Hierarchical design (oh wait.. light editions can only draw schematics on 1 sheet.. , that's not limiting the product result, that's just to crapify it)
- Annotation
- Better copy/paste functionality
- Don't make nets "stick" to components
- Have a DRC that makes sense. Also, be applicable to specific nets/netclasses/components/etc.

Some of these things may be preference, but I can't account any of those to Germany.

[homebrew]

Well, it is as with any other software. People tend to get religious with it. Vi or Emacs, Linux or Windows, Tex or Word ... countless examples.
And you can not say which is better over the other globally (or that one is globally crap), because it is a multidimensional optimisation problem and there are trade-offs to make.

You just won't get an ultra complex CAD environment for high frequency, high density and whatnot stuff that is completely learnable in a weekend, completely compatible to what you think is intuitive, completely error free and of course free of cost and open source! You just can't have that! Just as you can't have a car that does not use any energy and still moves you around fast.

So eagle isn't crap software after all. It has its niche. No one said, that you should try to route a server mainboard with it. The same as you won't use Vi as a replacement for a full blown IDE when the task demands that functionality.

And eagle supports hobbyists quite a lot, which is a big thumbs up - of course with the hidden intention of makreting in mind. You can't blame them for not giving you the whole product for free - they are a company as any other. Yes you only have one sheet (which by the way doesn't prevent you to put on multiple frames in the right distance so that you can print out as many pages as you want ...) and yes you only 80x100mm routing space. But you can still do awesome projects on that space! They even acknowledge the fact that many people are doing non-comerical designs and offer a less limited version to a fairly low price.

Other tool vendors don't do that at all: Cadence, Mentor etc, etc.

So stop bashing a product. If you don't like it, use another one.
And if you screw up don't blame the tool. I once used gEDA and for some reasons the standard diode symbols of gSchem are incompatible to gPCB which ended having their pins swapped! I ranted, too but in the end it was completely my fault of not reading the documentation properly.

But you are all right - every CAD I know software has a totally screwed up / unintuitive user interface when you are not used to it ...

[IanJ]

Well, it is as with any other software. People tend to get religious with it. Vi or Emacs, Linux or Windows, Tex or Word ... countless examples.
And you can not say which is better over the other globally (or that one is globally crap), because it is a multidimensional optimisation problem and there are trade-offs to make.

You just won't get an ultra complex CAD environment for high frequency, high density and whatnot stuff that is completely learnable in a weekend, completely compatible to what you think is intuitive, completely error free and of course free of cost and open source! You just can't have that! Just as you can't have a car that does not use any energy and still moves you around fast.

So eagle isn't crap software after all. It has its niche. No one said, that you should try to route a server mainboard with it. The same as you won't use Vi as a replacement for a full blown IDE when the task demands that functionality.

And eagle supports hobbyists quite a lot, which is a big thumbs up - of course with the hidden intention of makreting in mind. You can't blame them for not giving you the whole product for free - they are a company as any other. Yes you only have one sheet (which by the way doesn't prevent you to put on multiple frames in the right distance so that you can print out as many pages as you want ...) and yes you only 80x100mm routing space. But you can still do awesome projects on that space! They even acknowledge the fact that many people are doing non-comerical designs and offer a less limited version to a fairly low price.

Other tool vendors don't do that at all: Cadence, Mentor etc, etc.

So stop bashing a product. If you don't like it, use another one.
And if you screw up don't blame the tool. I once used gEDA and for some reasons the standard diode symbols of gSchem are incompatible to gPCB which ended having their pins swapped! I ranted, too but in the end it was completely my fault of not reading the documentation properly.

But you are all right - every CAD I know software has a totally screwed up / unintuitive user interface when you are not used to it ...

Great post.

Even the defacto standard CAD apps have issues. Take AutoCAD which up until recent versions meant you couldn't batch print a whole load of drawings without first enduring the unintuitive built in publishing wizard.

Speaking of which, maybe thats why I like Eagle......because it's UI to me (for the most part) is intuitive........I am also an AutoCAD user.

I do like Eagle.......I just wish CadSoft (Element14) would put more effort in to adding extra features, fixing bugs and tweaking stuff. They are extremely slow in that regard......it's almost as if they have a development team that is not totally focused on Eagle PCB alone. Huge efforts to re-write sections of the software to make saved files/libraries etc XML based.....then not much!

Ian.

[PlainName]

If you don't like it, use another one.

I think these 'bashers' probably are using another one

Nevertheless, suppose they all just quietly sloped off and used the competition: how would the authors know what's wrong if no-one whined about the faults? They would be unable to fix it, and we would end up with a series of niche apps forever not getting it right.

There may also be a subtle sub-context: that these bashers would like to use it were it not for whatever faults they describe. Of course, just saying it is crap is not particularly useful, but expanding on the reasons why they think so could be useful, even if it's not diplomatic.

[homebrew]

If you don't like it, use another one.

I think these 'bashers' probably are using another one

Nevertheless, suppose they all just quietly sloped off and used the competition: how would the authors know what's wrong if no-one whined about the faults? They would be unable to fix it, and we would end up with a series of niche apps forever not getting it right.

There may also be a subtle sub-context: that these bashers would like to use it were it not for whatever faults they describe. Of course, just saying it is crap is not particularly useful, but expanding on the reasons why they think so could be useful, even if it's not diplomatic.

I'm totally with you but it would require the employees of the company to read this blog ...
Also, if their sales figures don't drop they would probably not change anything regardless of the whining ...

[Kjelt]

I agree Eagle is not the best and its backwards stupid command compatibility (use cut so you can copy by groupselection is rediculous  ) makes it somewhat a steap learner but the price is right, there is a lot of support from the community and pcb fabs and at least this has never happened to me:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/altium/altium-ate-my-fucking-schematic/msg420311/#msg420311
to say that even incredible professional expensive software does not mean you don't have problems.

[AndyC_772]

Restore from overnight backup and get on with your life.

Relying on ANY software to be bug-free in order to avoid losing your work is crazy.

[at2marty]

O.K. I feel like I need to post my rant/backup for Eagle.

First of all, a bit of background.  I was trained by the U.S. Navy in electronics, specifically avionics.  I went through the navy school which was fast paced and not exactly easy.  After going through school I was assigned to an aircraft squadron which was designated an "O level" position.  What this means is, if a certain box failed in the aircraft, we simply changed the box and sent it to "I level" to get repaired.  The tools of my "trade" back then were simply a multimeter and a TDR.  Much of the troubleshooting was utilizing the onboard General Purpose Digital Computer (GPDC).

Fast forward a few years when personal computers first started being "mainstream" or "popular" (early-to-mid 90's).  I obtained one and discovered the internet.  Back then, a 14.4 baud modem was the shit!  I found a few "geeky" BBS's that dealt with computers and electronics.

Fast forward a few more years...  Redhat Linux was in it's infancy, and I got introduced to it.  I started using it, learned to  compile programs and eventually got comfortable with the "clunky interface" and the "quirks" of using X-11.  I also embraced the Open Source idea and learned that if I didn't like the way some piece of software worked, I could download the source and modify it to suit my needs.  Thus I learned how to program in not only C, but also learned about PERL, Python, C++ and other languages.

Fast forward a few more years and I ran across an article somewhere on the internet that was about Arduino.  It captured my interest, and I dove into playing with one.  Then, I started seeing that I could do more complex stuff with other AVR chips, and I started doing that.  Then, I discovered that I could do the same stuff with a PIC, an ARM Cortex, etc.  and I got the "bug" to get back into electronics again.

When I first was introduced to Eagle, much of it was centered around doing Arduino stuff.  Since I had a background with Linux and the tools available, I was able to adapt easily.  Yes it is a bit "clunky" if you use "professional software" such as AutoCad, but for me it was quite easy to learn, use and work with.  Is it easy to work with and use?  For me the answer is yes.  Does it get the job done?  Again, for me the answer is yes.  Is is a professional piece of software?  I would say no.

The bottom line is, Eagle isn't targeted so much at the "professional" crowd.  I would venture to say that the target is more the hobbyist (like me) and for that it is a fine piece of software.

[TerraHertz]

It's very interesting and useful, reading this thread.
Back when I used to do PCBs (up till around 2003) I'd used mainly Protel and Orcad. Eventually this year or next I hope to be doing some small designs again, but for myself. So the question is, what CAD package to use?

One thing that really irritates me is stupidly designed (or just plain undesigned) user interfaces. And I hate wasting time learning something to the point that I can fairly judge it, only to come to the conclusion that it's a piece of sh*t.

Till now I'd assumed that I should probably get Eagle, and invest the learning curve time with that.
From the comments on Eagle's arse-backwards modal interface, it seems like I'd hate it. Thanks for saving me a lot of time and effort. Old brain, 'new things' are not so easy anymore.

Ah well. Maybe I'll just stay with my very old Protel & Orcad packs. They do work, and gerber files are gerber files, who cares what produced them.
Also thanks for the list of alternatives.

[DerekG]

So the question is, what CAD package to use?

I guess it depends on how much design work you anticipate doing, how big the boards will be & how swollen your wallet is.

I have Protel EasyTrax all the way through to their final AutoTrax. I also have DXP & Altium ver 6.9 & the current version of DipTrace.

If I had my time again & my pcbs were less than 1000 pins, I would choose DipTrace (more bottom to mid end) or Proteus (more mid end) as their interfaces are perhaps the easiest to learn & their pin limited versions are really pretty cheap for what they offer.

I opened Protel PCB the other day to check an old board ................. and remember it is limited to listing only short directory names & short file names. Also, the mouse has no zoom, pans in 3 directions only (a bug since 1996!), no delete etc etc.

So, it all comes back to my first words above.

Let us know what you eventually decide.

[SArepairman]

I learned eagle first, made a few medium-density medium complexity boards and I found that Altium, despite raising my blood pressure a few times, is a much superior software package.

I have yet to use a sharpie to add something in alitum like I did in eagle, and I spent way less time trying to google arcane problems with altium, eagle stopped the show for me quite a few times and actually discouraged me from making PCBs.

But, eagle did get the job done, it did produce some working PCBs for me, altium would not have done them any better, its useful but frustrating in comparison. Hand mixer vs heavy duty kitchen mixer.

*I only ever made home etched PCBs. I don't know how much better it is for getting pcbs made.

[madires]

Eagle isn't horrible, I saw worse. Take BAE for example. It has all the professional features Eagle lacks but the UI needs getting used to. New components in Eagle are a piece of cake while in BAE you'll start cursing if you don't edit libs daily. But you can setup complex pin/gate swapping rules. The only PCB software with an intuitive UI was newio. Maybe you won't believe it, but it was an Amiga software and several companies used it for designing their PCBs.