Eagle will be part of Fusion360

[james_s]

I am more and more thankful with my decision to abandon Eagle years ago and stick to KiCad. Still completely free, still standalone, still working fine. 

[beanflying]

I am more and more thankful with my decision to abandon Eagle years ago and stick to KiCad. Still completely free, still standalone, still working fine.

If you continue down the dark path toward considering Linux then you won't ever be using Fusion without major pain either 

For others who looked and haven't relooked at it in the last few days there was a stack of upgrades rolled out for the Eagle part of it. I haven't looked at what they did but boot up Fusion and it should auto update. I will find a change log and add a link here if I can find it.

EDIT Not sure if this is all of them but here is the late January and the more recent Feb update

https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/january-27-2020-product-update-whats-new/

[H.O]

• We also rolled out 40 some performance tweaks to Electronics Design so that it is running in tip-top shape.

Well then...I suppose there's no reason for anyone to complain.

[beanflying]

'Tip Top' I would think is a very subjective technical term depending if you are the user or the seller/developer of

[rx8pilot]

I am more and more thankful with my decision to abandon Eagle years ago and stick to KiCad. Still completely free, still standalone, still working fine.

To be fair....the current version of Eagle is still working just fine as a standalone solution. Its fairly recent MCAD sync integration with Fusion is struggling at the moment. Autodesk has generated considerable anxiety for me in that I don't have any confidence that they will not pull the plug on Eagle at some very painful time. They literally have the ability to remotely and immediately mess up my business and THEY HAVE MANAGED TO USE THAT POWER RECENTLY.

I never considered KiCad because it is isolated from MCAD systems. The promise of MCAD and ECAD integration is why I did not abandon Eagle. There is some marginal effort being made with Altium/Solidworks but not really and those two applications cost $17k plus big annual fees. Each of those is far better than Fusion 360 and Eagle, but not integrated.

There is no perfect, sadly.

[rx8pilot]

• We also rolled out 40 some performance tweaks to Electronics Design so that it is running in tip-top shape.

Well then...I suppose there's no reason for anyone to complain.

When I saw this on the Autodesk site, I fell over laughing. 

[pointhi]

I never considered KiCad because it is isolated from MCAD systems.

There is a FreeCad <-> KiCad integration, which looks quite alot like the one of Fusion360 (based on videos, never used them)

https://forum.kicad.info/t/kicad-stepup-new-exporter-for-3d-mcad-feedbacks-are-welcome/1048/171

[nigelwright7557]

For a name,  a starting point and an existing customer base  £20 million is a noise bit to them.   

Since Eagle first came out the PCBCAD market has changed a lot.
There are many more vendors now chasing the same market.
Some very cheap ones which do the job and even some free ones which do the job.
I paid £5 for my PCBCAD package and have done around 300 PCB's with it and had no problems.

[macegr]

Autodesk has generated considerable anxiety for me in that I don't have any confidence that they will not pull the plug on Eagle at some very painful time. They literally have the ability to remotely and immediately mess up my business and THEY HAVE MANAGED TO USE THAT POWER RECENTLY.

I expressed this exact concern the very moment Autodesk announced subscription model. Ever since then, people (for example, the current head of the Eagle project at Autodesk) have been calling me an alarmist, FUD-generating troll, or otherwise defending Autodesk and claiming Autodesk would never hurt them. The Autodesk and subscription model defenders are still claiming "They'd never hurt me, they love me" but are doing it in a shaky voice with a black eye.

[rx8pilot]

Autodesk has generated considerable anxiety for me in that I don't have any confidence that they will not pull the plug on Eagle at some very painful time. They literally have the ability to remotely and immediately mess up my business and THEY HAVE MANAGED TO USE THAT POWER RECENTLY.

I expressed this exact concern the very moment Autodesk announced subscription model. Ever since then, people (for example, the current head of the Eagle project at Autodesk) have been calling me an alarmist, FUD-generating troll, or otherwise defending Autodesk and claiming Autodesk would never hurt them. The Autodesk and subscription model defenders are still claiming "They'd never hurt me, they love me" but are doing it in a shaky voice with a black eye.

The pickle I am in is that KiCad and other low cost design tools are not up to the task of integrated design of complex EE and ME products IMHO. If I went back to Solidworks - Altium Designer - MasterCAM, I would have to shell out mega-$$$. Not sure if the pain of the money would wear off by the time Autodesk gets settled in with Eagle. At the moment Fusion 360 is improving rapidly and allows me to do very sophisticated mechanical design and CNC programming up to 7 axis mill-turn machines. Tons of bang for the buck - but Eagle is a major black eye at the moment. it certainly does not help that they are treating this as a consumer product/service.

[macegr]

Many of us have somehow managed, for many years, to design complex assemblies with integrated circuit boards and mechanical components without modeling every 0201 resistor.

[rx8pilot]

Many of us have somehow managed, for many years, to design complex assemblies with integrated circuit boards and mechanical components without modeling every 0201 resistor.

I don't model resistors.

I also designed many products with no integration at all. My expectations for project efficiency have increased considerably over the years. It is not about being impossible, it is about being fast.

[kreeper_6]

Fusion 360 has a free no limitation hobby license and now includes ECAD with eagle premium features. This is a boon for hobbyists.

[macegr]

They don't have a free no-limitation license for hobbyists anymore. They changed it near the end of the year. Now there is a free for personal use (making less than $1000/yr) and it comes with the limited Eagle (2 layers, board area limited) not the full version.

[escapekit]

I have been using Eagle for about 3 years now. I've never used another EDA so I can't compare. I've been really happy with Eagle and the improvements Autodesk has made over the years. It really works a lot better the 3 years ago when I started using it.
I've tried to switch to "Fusion Electronics"... it is a mess... bugs EVERYWHERE! You can't spend more than 20 or 50 minutes without finding a bug that kills your last 20 or 30 minutes of work. And that's being VERY careful of how and when you save your design because anything can end up in a consistency error between schematic and board.
I think the idea of joining ECAD and MCAD is brilliant but they released a product that is NOWHERE near production. This should be in beta at most. You can't expect to get anything done with this.
I am really disappointed. It's like someone gave you a great looking sports car and it broke down every 5 minutes. You have it right there and it looks so promising but you just can't use it because it is a f... mess.
So frustating.

[Karel]

I think the idea of joining ECAD and MCAD is brilliant but ...

No, it's not. The idea that a professional electronics engineer should do electronics design (and probably also some MCU firmware
development) and mechanical design is really crazy. When we need a mechanical design, we hire a mechanical engineer.
You can't be good in everything.

[steenerson]

the point is the mechanical and electrical designs can be linked so if you move a component on the PCB layout or in the 3D mechanical model, it gets updated in the other automatically. it makes certain things much easier, doesn't matter if there's one person or 10 working on it

[escapekit]

I think the idea of joining ECAD and MCAD is brilliant but ...

No, it's not. The idea that a professional electronics engineer should do electronics design (and probably also some MCU firmware development)
and mechanical design is really crazy. When we need a mechanical design, we hier a mechanical engineer.
You can't be good in everything.

First of all, some of us run a business by ourselves and need to do everything (or most of it) ourselves. For people like me, joining ECAD and MCAD is just great. I can't just hire a mechanical engineer because I need to 3Dprint an enclosure or a support bracket for a one off PCB I designed for a client.
For bigger companies, Fusion offers possibilities for teams to work on the same project, making it easy for a mechanical engineer and a electrical engineer to work on both sides of the project sharing data and designs. Although, honestly, I haven't used this option so I don't even know if it is any good.

[macegr]

PCB layout always was 3D mechanical design, so Autodesk is not wrong to work on integration. There is real value to be explored in that space.

As I've mentioned many times before, I'm a long-time user of several flagship Autodesk products and have no real issues with the technology, I just refuse to rent software that has a built-in kill switch.

[rx8pilot]

The concept of ECAD and MCAD integration is totally sound and useful. Autodesk, at this moment, is struggling with the initial rollout.

I suspect it will not take long to stabilize and ultimately be considered a major step forward in design workflow. For those that cannot tolerate the subscription/cloud data model - get your check book warmed up because you are going to pay. Either pay the money or pay the operational price of using outdated standalone software.

If I ONLY did circuit design or PCB layout or mechanical design - perhaps I would stick with the standalone options that I used for years. My role is designing a complete product from concept to customer delivery so the Fusion360 concept is great. It is at least good enough to give Autodesk some time to get their shit together.

[macegr]

For those that cannot tolerate the subscription/cloud data model - get your check book warmed up because you are going to pay. Either pay the money or pay the operational price of using outdated standalone software.

Oh I'd love to pay, I've personally put about $2000 into Eagle alone. I just don't pay for the privilege of running software locally on my own computer on a monthly basis. I have to pay upfront months in advance to produce my hardware and I don't get paid until someone actually buys it, so the sympathy ploy of "those poor developers need predictable cash flow" doesn't work on me. We'd all like people to have to pay us or else their tools stop working, but I don't have enough of a monopoly to force it on anyone.

[rx8pilot]

As a reference:
I initially paid about $10,000 for Solidworks in 1998 plus about $1200/year in maintenance. I skipped some years.
When I needed CAM, I had to spend $13,000 for Camworks as an add-on to Solidworks.
Camworks sucked, so I spent $15,000 for Mastercam plus $1400/year maintenance.
Then I needed high quality rendering so I had to pay $1500 for 3rd party rendering/animation
When I needed to add electronics, I was using Altium but on one of my customers license. I ended up just getting Eagle when I needed to design my own circuits/PCB's since Altium is $10,000 plus $1000+/year for maintenance.

As my buisness grew over the years - I had added 2 additional seats of Solidworks and one more Mastercam.

The numbers were staggering.

All of this is included in my Fusion360 subscription for a few hundred per year with no up front costs. A massive cash savings.

I have chosen my battles and Solidworks/Mastercam/Altium lost. $30k total plus $3600/year for maintenance updates. That is a LOT of money for software that is only slightly better than the competition that is a tiny fraction of that.

[beanflying]

Much as I hate leasing software the Fusion cost/year is chunks less than some alternates. The Freebie options for those of us not making much from it are a great thing too when starting out sub $100k is a fairly generous free level IMO.

Next lot of upgrades from the last month here https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/february-2020-product-update-whats-new/ once again all Eagle integration ones so they are seemingly focused on getting it closer than the current 'Beta' version 

[escapekit]

Much as I hate leasing software the Fusion cost/year is chunks less than some alternates. The Freebie options for those of us not making much from it are a great thing too when starting out sub $100k is a fairly generous free level IMO.

Next lot of upgrades from the last month here https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/february-2020-product-update-whats-new/ once again all Eagle integration ones so they are seemingly focused on getting it closer than the current 'Beta' version 

I agree with everything you said. I am on a free startup license and it really helps to be able to use good software without the associated cost, at least when you are starting.
Let's hope they make the electronics par usable because right now it is hell!

[hanakp]

Matt Berggren from Autodesk estimates it will take them at least 1 year to fully integrate Eagle into Fusion 360 and another 1 year to herd people from desktop Eagle to Fusion Eagle:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/will-eagle-as-a-standalone-product-disappear-following-the/m-p/9313704#M28372

In other words, desktop Eagle will be toast in 2 years, give or take.