Author Topic: Eagle is horrible software  (Read 84738 times)

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Offline LukeW

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #50 on: April 10, 2014, 03:09:55 pm »
For people who say Eagle is horrible, what are you comparing it to?

If you're comparing Eagle vs. Altium, or some $10,000 commercial software product, then obviously it's not a fair comparison. If you want an expensive product like that then go and use it.

I have seen people bitch about Eagle when they have never used any other EDA/CAD software other than Eagle, ever! WTF?

At least with Eagle you can install it and use it quite easily on any major OS family you choose to use - Windows, Linux or Mac - with no problems. What other software options offer you that?
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #51 on: April 10, 2014, 05:26:44 pm »
If you're comparing Eagle vs. Altium, or some $10,000 commercial software product, then obviously it's not a fair comparison.
Agree, it's time for a "Altium is horribly expensive software" topic.  ;D
 

Offline Q-Kernel

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #52 on: April 10, 2014, 06:24:23 pm »
If you're comparing Eagle vs. Altium, or some $10,000 commercial software product, then obviously it's not a fair comparison.

Compare it with DipTrace. DipTrace is not free but it starts from $75 and the full version ($895) is cheaper than the Eagle full version ($1145). And Diptrace is much better than Eagle
 

Offline kikib

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #53 on: April 11, 2014, 12:21:39 pm »
If you're comparing Eagle vs. Altium, or some $10,000 commercial software product, then obviously it's not a fair comparison.

Compare it with DipTrace. DipTrace is not free but it starts from $75 and the full version ($895) is cheaper than the Eagle full version ($1145). And Diptrace is much better than Eagle

If you are talking about a more intuitive UI then you can say Diptrace is better than Eagle in that regard. But if you are talking about making more complex PCB's then Eagle is much better.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2014, 12:23:12 pm by kikib »
 

Online Mechatrommer

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #54 on: April 11, 2014, 02:11:34 pm »
If you are talking about a more intuitive UI then you can say Diptrace is better than Eagle in that regard. But if you are talking about making more complex PCB's then Eagle is much better.
are you sure? since this kind of info should come from an unlimited licensed version users, are you unlimited version user? and made a complex circuits with diptrace up to the point where performance lagging are really significant?
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline kikib

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #55 on: April 11, 2014, 02:42:41 pm »
If you are talking about a more intuitive UI then you can say Diptrace is better than Eagle in that regard. But if you are talking about making more complex PCB's then Eagle is much better.
are you sure? since this kind of info should come from an unlimited licensed version users, are you unlimited version user? and made a complex circuits with diptrace up to the point where performance lagging are really significant?

Haha are you? Clearly you are jumping ahead and trying to suggest that you can't evaluate a software's features fully if you aren't using the full version where in this case the only difference between the versions are pin-count and signal layer count. The complexity of a design doesn't necessarily relate to pin-count but other features. If it lacks feature X, Y, and Z then no-matter what pin-count you have it won't matter, will it?
« Last Edit: April 11, 2014, 03:01:10 pm by kikib »
 

Online Mechatrommer

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #56 on: April 11, 2014, 07:36:09 pm »
Haha are you? Clearly you are jumping ahead and trying to suggest that you can't evaluate a software's features fully if you aren't using the full version where in this case the only difference between the versions are pin-count and signal layer count. The complexity of a design doesn't necessarily relate to pin-count but other features. If it lacks feature X, Y, and Z then no-matter what pin-count you have it won't matter, will it?
i wouldnt ask if i am sure. yes i cant evaluate software performance to its full extend with 300 pin count and 2 layers limit. i did a design which hit the limit and i didnt see any performance lag in diptrace. number of traces (complexity) is highly related to pin counts, not to mention the number of layers' overlay or alphablend that need to be drawn. unless you want to do something specific for the test such as making alot of redundant traces, which i never did. even if i did or want to do, i dont see the point or validity of "simulated performance test" instead of "real life very complex pcb design" experience, no?
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline kikib

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #57 on: April 12, 2014, 02:02:01 am »
Haha are you? Clearly you are jumping ahead and trying to suggest that you can't evaluate a software's features fully if you aren't using the full version where in this case the only difference between the versions are pin-count and signal layer count. The complexity of a design doesn't necessarily relate to pin-count but other features. If it lacks feature X, Y, and Z then no-matter what pin-count you have it won't matter, will it?
i wouldnt ask if i am sure. yes i cant evaluate software performance to its full extend with 300 pin count and 2 layers limit. i did a design which hit the limit and i didnt see any performance lag in diptrace. number of traces (complexity) is highly related to pin counts, not to mention the number of layers' overlay or alphablend that need to be drawn. unless you want to do something specific for the test such as making alot of redundant traces, which i never did. even if i did or want to do, i dont see the point or validity of "simulated performance test" instead of "real life very complex pcb design" experience, no?

I'm not talking about size of the board or the pin-count when I say "complexity" or the performance (speed/lag) of the program itself, I am talking about designs which have high-speed signals involved. For example, ARM microcontrollers running at 100MHz+, ethernet controllers 25MHz+, RF designs, and such typical stuff. Projects using high-speed signals require careful component placement and routing, differential pair routing, trace meandering, impedance matching and so on. Diptrace doesn't provide these features which makes it unsuitable for complex designs. So again, it's not about pin-count or board size but rather complexity of the design itself. In that regard Eagle has several nice features that allows you to do these kind of designs, which are typical in the commercial industry, and it is closer to software like Altium which also has these features.
« Last Edit: April 16, 2014, 02:55:24 pm by kikib »
 

Offline Wilksey

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #58 on: April 16, 2014, 05:09:53 pm »
What exactly makes Eagle "Horrible" ?

From what I have read so far all I can see is peoples inability to navigate and use it properly?

I have used Kicad, Diptrace, Altium, OrCad / Allegro, Pulsonix, Design Spark, Proteus, CadStar, Ultiboard and a few others when evaluating, I didn't end up making the final PCB run, bit I designed a board with 4 layers and about 500 pins, not all entirely what you might call "Licensed" evaluation copies, but some were and some didn't need licensing.

Anyway, I always used Eagle and another program called Ranger XL and was wondering at the time if there were any better CAD systems to use, I went by ease of use, how easy a footprint / component was to produce and how easy I could measure things on the layout.

I spent on / off about a year looking at these different packages, and I went to a design show where several were being showcased, I was already familiar with some packages as I use them at work.

My initial thoughts were that Proteus was a really good, nice to use package, but could be quite expensive, the likes of Altium and Orcad were quite good, had a lot of features that I didn't need and would never use, so in that respect made things a bit wasteful and seemingly more complicated to use.

Kicad is good for what it is, free.

Diptrace is very good, but apart from the interface, which is always going to look nicer as it was done in Delphi, didn't seem to be more intuitive or possess any immediate feature that would make me want to switch from Eagle.

From what I could gather they are both similarly matched in performance, I haven't found either to be particularly clunky in design, it really does come down to personal preference, Eagle arguably has the most parts in it's library and the fact you can download them direct from Farnell / Element 14 is a bonus, RS is doing something similar with Design Spark.

It really does boil down to the same question that people ask over and over again ( I asked myself at one point) which is the best PCB software to use?  Answer: all of them, they all do things their own way and have their own pro's and con's, if you are doing high speed systems maybe Altium or Cadence is your best bet, I have seen DDR5 routed with Eagle no problem though, at the end of the day it is down to personal preference, they will all do what you want them to do, even Kicad these days is quite powerful.

So, my conclusion is that Eagle is not "shit" it is just not as easy to grasp as some of the other packages, you would be surprised (and maybe shocked) if you have seen some of the things that Eagle was used to design, it IS used in the industry for commercial and transport based systems and I am pretty sure I read that the Military use or used to use it as well for designs, I know of at least one company designing high speed cable testing facilities for the aerospace industry that use it as it was in one of their job descriptions!

Yes there are differences, there always will be, it's like comparing Windows to Linux, sure Windows isn't as open as Linux, but they both ultimately do the same job, and Windows didn't suffer from the "heartbleed" bug, unlinke Linux, which is a +1 for Windows.

Sorry for the long read, but it makes me laugh when people compare packages and call one crap and another brilliant because of some reason that boils down to misunderstanding or not RTFM.

For those wanting to chose a package, do what I did, download several, have a go in all of them, with the same design, it might seem pointless to begin with repeating work, especially if you have to make a footprint, and it will take some time, but will be worth it in the end, and after all, if you can't make a footprint then what's the point in trying to design a PCB?  PCB Design is time consuming, so use a tool you are happy with rather that one someone said you should use because it can measure a track with one less click than another package.
 

Offline Monkeh

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #59 on: April 16, 2014, 05:18:58 pm »
Yes there are differences, there always will be, it's like comparing Windows to Linux, sure Windows isn't as open as Linux, but they both ultimately do the same job, and Windows didn't suffer from the "heartbleed" bug, unlinke Linux, which is a +1 for Windows.

Neither Windows nor Linux 'suffered' from Heartbleed, the software running on them did. Yes, them, vulnerable versions of OpenSSL can be and were deployed on Windows boxes, not to mention other platforms!
 

Offline Wilksey

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #60 on: April 17, 2014, 11:36:21 am »
OK,
I am generalising as it is a PCB package topic, but my Ubuntu box running Apache had the bug, my Windows box running IIS didn't, I probably should have specified that it was from my own setup rather than people's general perceived view.
 

Online Mechatrommer

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #61 on: April 17, 2014, 03:18:41 pm »
sure Windows isn't as open as Linux, but they both ultimately do the same job.
no they dont. with windows, you buy a device with cd driver or download from internet, install and done its working. with linux, you buy a device, you search the internet for linux driver, good luck on that. or finding forum or ask someone how to, or probably code somthing to make the device works. and linux doesnt have professional (good) grade of commercial software meant for business, or at least not as abundant as windows. hence they both are not doing the same job.

similarly with eagle vs say diptrace. to do a job you need 10 clicks in eagle but 3 clicks in diptrace, hence they are not the same. well, from my perspective at least. i dont say yours is wrong ;) they probably are the same, but how you do it is different.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2014, 03:22:06 pm by Mechatrommer »
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline Wilksey

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #62 on: April 17, 2014, 05:55:05 pm »
OK, drivers aside, lol, as I say, I didn't want to specifically break down windows vs linux, I was just trying to say that they can both serve as a desktop operating system and allow you to do everyday tasks, for everyday people, i.e. write a text document, open a web page etc.

In a round about (or arse about) way I was just trying to say that because one application does something different to another one it does not make it rubbish, it makes it different, and if you like it then you will learn how to use it regardless if your old favourite one did it in less clicks (or if you need to compile a driver  ;) ).

It is very much down to personal preferences and stubbornness for older players.
 

Offline Monkeh

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #63 on: April 17, 2014, 06:34:09 pm »
sure Windows isn't as open as Linux, but they both ultimately do the same job.
no they dont. with windows, you buy a device with cd driver or download from internet, install and done its working. with linux, you buy a device, you search the internet for linux driver, good luck on that. or finding forum or ask someone how to, or probably code somthing to make the device works.

Learn a little something and get some modern experience, and/or stop badly trolling.

I bought a new printer the other week. Getting it running on Linux took two minutes and a manufacturer supplied file less than 100KiB in size. Getting it running on Windows took 20, and a manufacturer supplied installer over 100MiB in size.

Vast majority of hardware is not a problem, the year is not 1998 any more.
« Last Edit: April 17, 2014, 06:35:59 pm by Monkeh »
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #64 on: April 17, 2014, 07:32:02 pm »
You bought a HP just like me, with the horrible built in driver disk. Took 3 minutes on the HP website to get it working, just like if it was a Windows driver, just not a 350Mb download installer. Only drawback is it does not match the rest of the desktop, but I am not going to make some custom icons to get the tray applet to match when it shows.
 

Offline Monkeh

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #65 on: April 17, 2014, 07:33:53 pm »
You bought a HP just like me, with the horrible built in driver disk. Took 3 minutes on the HP website to get it working, just like if it was a Windows driver, just not a 350Mb download installer. Only drawback is it does not match the rest of the desktop, but I am not going to make some custom icons to get the tray applet to match when it shows.

No, I didn't. I bought a Lexmark, never touched the disk, and I don't have any tray applets on any machine (why the fuck would I need a tray applet? The printer will email me when it needs toner, or jams. Yes, I am quite serious.).
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #66 on: April 17, 2014, 07:54:36 pm »
Network printer then, not a USB one. Those generally have a pretty good support from the CUPS built in driver set, though I admit I am using a new HP PCL6 printer still with the existing PPD of the old 4MV it replaced 3 printers ago, never bothered to change as I just installed new with same IP. Makes absolutely no difference.
 

Offline Kjelt

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #67 on: April 17, 2014, 08:48:59 pm »
BOT please
 

Offline Corporate666

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #68 on: April 17, 2014, 08:57:44 pm »
What exactly makes Eagle "Horrible" ?

From what I have read so far all I can see is peoples inability to navigate and use it properly?

Sorry for the long read, but it makes me laugh when people compare packages and call one crap and another brilliant because of some reason that boils down to misunderstanding or not RTFM.


I think that if that is what you took from the complaints against Eagle, then you likely weren't reading closely or are making excuses.  Several people pointed out big gaping holes in Eagle functionality.

A very few off the top of my head...

1) You can't change the orientation of a non-solid ground pour.  For obvious reasons, when using a crosshatch ground pour, you want it at a 45 degree angle to your existing horizontal/vertical traces.  Eagle does not allow this.  The software manufacturers response?  Make your whole board, turn on all layers, group-select it and then rotate everything to 45-degrees.  Then use a crosshatch pour which will be at 45 degrees.   Is that reasonable, considering it essentially means if you ever need to make any changes, you must remove all your crosshatch pours, re-rotate the board back 45 degrees, make changes, then re-select everything, rotate 45 degrees and re-apply the pour.  That's ridiculous.

2) The way arbitrary pad shapes are supported is a total hack and gives DRC errors if you don't connect your pads in a manner that works around the hacked way they implemented arbitrary pad shapes.

3) Eagle is incapable of reading standard CAD formats, so if you have some sort of arbitrary board outline, it's impossible to open it in Eagle.  The two tools (Eagle Power Tools and DXF2SCR) are horrendous.  One is paid only and hasn't been updated in years.  The other also hasn't been updated in years and does not support splines, meaning you must open CAD files in another program and explode them into discrete segments.  All because Eagle is incapable of reading standard CAD formats.

4) The way Eagle handles panelization is a total hack and breaks DRC and forward/back annotation.  Making changes to a panelized board becomes a giant mess.  Panelization is a basic aspect of modern PCB fabrication and Eagle being so unable to handle it is shit.

There are so many more - especially when you get to multi-layer boards, inability to measure and reference parts from one another, library management, clearancing, BOM management, and so much more.

I use Eagle and I know the software very well.  I find it comfortable to use because I have gotten to be an expert in the past 10 years with it... but it's total shit software full of kludges, workarounds, half-assed fixes and is missing some basic fundamental features that any serious PCB tool should have.
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Offline DerekG

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #69 on: April 18, 2014, 03:21:00 am »

I find it comfortable to use because I have gotten to be an expert in the past 10 years with it... but it's total shit software full of kludges, workarounds, half-assed fixes and is missing some basic fundamental features that any serious PCB tool should have.

You should continue to email Eagle each month, pointing out all their problems & pointing them to your forum criticisms.

Point out that you will continue to do this each month until they fix the bugs & add the extra features to make Eagle easy to use.

If they listen, then you have accomplished what you have set out to do (& will end up with a much better PCB design program).

If Eagle do nothing, you can add "lack of support" to your criticisms in the forums for the world to view.

I actually don't like Altium as a company, but if enough users complain about something, it usually (eventually) gets fixed.
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Offline copper dog

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #70 on: April 22, 2014, 02:51:51 pm »
Like any CAD program the learning curve is steep. It took me a while to get the hang of Eagle but now the toughest part of any design is finding a library with the package I need. Even then I don't spend a lot of time looking since creating your own packages is fairly simple just longer. I can certainly understand the frustration of a deadline while trying to learn a software program though.


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Offline techydude

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #71 on: April 22, 2014, 03:31:32 pm »
a lifetime ago I was proficient & regular Protel/Altium user.  being unable to afford the $redonkulous for Altium for the time being, I looked at Eagle, Kicad & DIPtrace, the latter two after watching Dave's reviews of them a while back.

I loath Eagle, the workflow was not at all what I was used to after Protel/Altium.  As others have contributed, you can get used to anything, even Eagle (like wearing that old pair of sneakers, even though there's half an inch different sole thickness form one side to the other, & getting worse by the day...), but my attitude is there's plenty of other options in the low end EDA tools, so I kept looking.  Kicad didn't really grab me, but DIPtrace was "good enough", and has some nice features that set it well apart from Eagle.
 

Offline BloodyCactus

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #72 on: April 25, 2014, 01:53:52 pm »
As a linux user, I have no other choice but Eagle, I have got used to its idiosyncrasies.

I tried kicad but damn that was some horrible shit, and a non existant part library. At least with Eagle the part library is huge, and its very easy to find other part libraries people have made. Having access to the sparkfun, adafruit, etc libraries is also very nice.

Obviously I'm only a hobbyist, and I have the standard Eagle (6"x4" limitation). I need to make something bigger than 6x4 and my only choice... pay for upgrade to the full size Eagle, because... there is no other choice on Linux.

They say driptrace can run under wine, but I dont trust that kind of crap emulation.

I guess my other option is running it in VirtualBox but I would rather stay native.
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Offline AndyC_772

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #73 on: April 25, 2014, 02:13:23 pm »
It sounds more as though it's the choice to use Linux that's giving you problems.

Offline BloodyCactus

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Re: Eagle is horrible software
« Reply #74 on: April 25, 2014, 02:24:25 pm »
I dont think so, as I said, I'm using Eagle just fine, but ponying up 1600$ to scale up outside the 6x4" pcb limitation makes me think, if I can run diptrace in virtual box, maybe thats a better investment.

For native Linux, Eagle is the only choice.
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