EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Electronics => PCB/EDA/CAD => Eagle => Topic started by: ehughes on February 13, 2017, 02:28:49 pm
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Pure speculation at this point but I think EAGLE as a standalone product will be a thing of the past. It doesn't take a lot of brainpower to read these tea leaves. Not saying that this is a bad thing for those who do integrated design but my *guess* is that you will soon be purchasing Fusion360, not EAGLE.
http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/fusion-forecast-dont-resist-current/ (http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/fusion-forecast-dont-resist-current/)
http://schnitgercorp.com/2016/06/29/autodesk-acquires-pcb-design-fusion-360/ (http://schnitgercorp.com/2016/06/29/autodesk-acquires-pcb-design-fusion-360/)
I am willing to best a basket of chicken wings that the UI will be dumped(which is good news), the guts will be thrown out(which is good news) and EAGLE will be simply a name for the ECAD component of Fusion360. The internal architecture will *never* work with an integrated tool as the current code base implements a system that is stove-piped *by design*. The current method of move into the 3d space in EAGLE is an ugly hack and I can't see a large company like Autodesk having a tool that looks this primitive.
When it is all over, I am guessing that you will have the the name EAGLE and the XML file format. There is absolutely no way to sell EAGLE in its current form as an Autodesk product in the long term. If I was a pointy haired boss, I would probably be doing the same. The "old customers" will go to KiCAD or Dip Trace regardless of what Autodesk does. They are after competing with Dassault and fish with much bigger pocket books.
I am not saying any of this is bad per say, just that I can't see the old business strategy working in the long term. Autodesk is about integrated product design. EAGLE in its current form will never able to be part of that mission.
To them, I say onward and upward. We need better tools! I am a Solidworks and Altium User but some healthy competition from Autodesk will be a very good thing.
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I am willing to best a basket of chicken wings that the UI will be dumped(which is good news), the guts will be thrown out(which is good news) and EAGLE will be simply a name for the ECAD component of Fusion360.
You think they paid £20 million for Cadsoft just for the "name"?
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Pure speculation at this point but I think EAGLE as a standalone product will be a thing of the past. It doesn't take a lot of brainpower to read these tea leaves. Not saying that this is a bad thing for those who do integrated design but my *guess* is that you will soon be purchasing Fusion360, not EAGLE.
I am Fusion360 user for my tinkering and I don't believe such move would make any sense whatsoever. Perhaps Fusion will get some PCB import capability and Eagle gets better support for mechanical CAD, but otherwise those are completely different worlds and user bases. Few mechanical engineers need PCB design support (and even know how to design boards) and few EEs need a full blown mechanical CAD package - most need only import and export. Merging those two products wouldn't really help anyone. Ever heard about jack of all trades master of none?
Also Fusion is mostly an experimental "sandbox" for Autodesk for trying out new ideas and to have a foothold in the low end market but the real money is in AutoCAD and Inventor, not in Fusion360.
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You think they paid £20 million for Cadsoft just for the "name"?
http://amigobulls.com/stocks/ADSK/income-statement/annual (http://amigobulls.com/stocks/ADSK/income-statement/annual)
For a name, a starting point and an existing customer base £20 million is a noise bit to them.
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Have a look at this page: http://www.autodesk.com/products (http://www.autodesk.com/products)
Notice anything? That's right, Autodesk aren't in the habit of retiring products if they have active users. They have Fusion 360 but Autocad isn't going anywhere.
I think they're hoping they can fix Eagle bit by bit (seems crazy to me too), but if not I think they would consider building a new product from the ground up using the experience from the Eagle team but as a new separate product that would try to gain new customers through new approaches and new licensing models. Seems like a bit of a challenge though even though compared to the mechanical CAD industry all PCB design software is embarrassingly bad.
I was actually quite disappointed that Autodesk bought Eagle, because I think if they had instead made an attempt to build a completely new tool from the ground up, in the vein of Fusion 360, it could have been something really interesting, taking some ideas from parametric CAD, design history, more "smarts" throughout.
Even autorouting would be interesting to have another look at... So far almost all autorouting algorithms are terrible because they are purely rules-based, but applying some of the recent advances in convolutional neural networks and reinforcement learning, effectively teaching the algorithm what good routing looks like (so it should learn what good decoupling looks like, or BGA fanout, good groundplane, etc) would be really interesting.
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Even autorouting would be interesting to have another look at... So far almost all autorouting algorithms are terrible because they are purely rules-based, but applying some of the recent advances in convolutional neural networks and reinforcement learning, effectively teaching the algorithm what good routing looks like (so it should learn what good decoupling looks like, or BGA fanout, good groundplane, etc) would be really interesting.
I think that is a bit overly optimistic to expect from AutoDesk. That is not a company too known for innovation - most new things that came from them were thanks to acquisitions when they have bought out competitors. All their major products came to being like that, with maybe the exception of AutoCAD.
They also don't have any previous experience in EDA/PCB design. All their tools are about 3D modelling and mechanical CAD, that is what they are known for. So all such know-how would have to come from the Eagle team - and if those people had such abilities I think Eagle wouldn't be the PCB software known for its unusable crappy autorouter ...
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Hey guys,
you can still purchase EAGLE licences on autodesk: http://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/subscribe. (http://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/subscribe.)
Do you know of any changes on EAGLE already? i find the new presence is very neat, but i hope they keep the product.
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Hey guys,
you can still purchase EAGLE licences on autodesk: http://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/subscribe. (http://www.autodesk.com/products/eagle/subscribe.)
Do you know of any changes on EAGLE already? i find the new presence is very neat, but i hope they keep the product.
Did you miss the huge recent thread with the uproar when AutoDesk made Eagle subscription only, jacked up the price and now requires periodic online check-in? All after steadfastly denying they are going to do that only few months ago. That's why Eagle is a dead horse for many, even though it is still technically sold (err, rented).
The fact that people are abandoning it in droves because of this is not a sufficient change for you? Or maybe you are the exception to the rule that likes the new business model :-//
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Meanwhile, at Autodesk...
http://fortune.com/2017/02/07/autodesk-carl-bass/ (http://fortune.com/2017/02/07/autodesk-carl-bass/)
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Autodesk CEO Carl Bass: "The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment."
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Even autorouting would be interesting to have another look at... So far almost all autorouting algorithms are terrible because they are purely rules-based, but applying some of the recent advances in convolutional neural networks and reinforcement learning, effectively teaching the algorithm what good routing looks like (so it should learn what good decoupling looks like, or BGA fanout, good groundplane, etc) would be really interesting.
I think that is a bit overly optimistic to expect from AutoDesk. That is not a company too known for innovation - most new things that came from them were thanks to acquisitions when they have bought out competitors. All their major products came to being like that, with maybe the exception of AutoCAD.
They also don't have any previous experience in EDA/PCB design. All their tools are about 3D modelling and mechanical CAD, that is what they are known for. So all such know-how would have to come from the Eagle team - and if those people had such abilities I think Eagle wouldn't be the PCB software known for its unusable crappy autorouter ...
Yes, I'm sure you're right. It's a bit of a pipe-dream... I look at the state of PCB design tools and all the major ones have source-base going back to DOS days. Must be horrific to work on. Like Altium which apparently is still in large part based on Delphi. I didn't even know Delphi still existed... Amusingly the example UI from the recent version of Delphi is basically the Altium UI: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi (https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi) (they must be the largest remaining customer...)
So I think there is an opportunity for Autodesk to take the Eagle team and move half of them to a team building a completely new EDA tool, and the other half onto maintenance of Eagle. I'm guessing that's more or less what they did for Fusion 360. But I have no reason to believe that's the plan (and it's looking like they're trying to add lipstick to the existing Eagle codebase instead...), and if they did we wouldn't hear about it for a few years until they have something to show...
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Eli, if I never told you you were insightful, let this be the first time. And if we aimed to be coy in our strategy, we should have picked a name other than "Fusion" when we named the product. ;). (They say the ship leaks from the top...so I guess I'm the guilty party).
Truth is, this is a direction we are extremely interested in and this was even announced (albeit a bit anecdotally) at Autodesk University this past year. We (Autodesk) don't view these as separate processes any longer and my charter is in ensuring that we treat ECAD, MCAD & Manufacturing as all sides of the same coin.
Curiously, I think Altium figured this out when they suddenly put Eagle and Altium Designer on the same footing by providing a massive discount to EAGLE users. The fact is, it's only time & resources that creates the lead.
Our goal at Autodesk goes beyond feature parity. Sure, we know we need comprehensive solutions for routing, design reuse, hierarchy, libs, data management, mcad integration, etc. ...but there's SO much more we can do if we integrated these capabilities at some level. And truth is, we have a bit of a blank slate insofar as we have a lot to build from, but a lot of "net-new" stuff to build. It's a shame really, just trying to be patient long enough for this all to take place.
The question is, what happens to the $12K tool with $1250/yr maintenance when someone does the same thing for less than $1000? And what if 80% of that is under $500? Then what? :). ...Game on.
Best regards,
Matt - Autodesk.
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Eli, if I never told you you were insightful, let this be the first time. And if we aimed to be coy in our strategy, we should have picked a name other than "Fusion" when we named the product. ;). (They say the ship leaks from the top...so I guess I'm the guilty party).
Truth is, this is a direction we are extremely interested in and this was even announced (albeit a bit anecdotally) at Autodesk University this past year. We (Autodesk) don't view these as separate processes any longer and my charter is in ensuring that we treat ECAD, MCAD & Manufacturing as all sides of the same coin.
Curiously, I think Altium figured this out when they suddenly put Eagle and Altium Designer on the same footing by providing a massive discount to EAGLE users. The fact is, it's only time & resources that creates the lead.
Our goal at Autodesk goes beyond feature parity. Sure, we know we need comprehensive solutions for routing, design reuse, hierarchy, libs, data management, mcad integration, etc. ...but there's SO much more we can do if we integrated these capabilities at some level. And truth is, we have a bit of a blank slate insofar as we have a lot to build from, but a lot of "net-new" stuff to build. It's a shame really, just trying to be patient long enough for this all to take place.
The question is, what happens to the $12K tool with $1250/yr maintenance when someone does the same thing for less than $1000? And what if 80% of that is under $500? Then what? :). ...Game on.
Best regards,
Matt - Autodesk.
If have to rent it? Nothing, that's what happens. You guys are losing a huge chunk of the market by not having perpetual license. ;)
Seriously though, I'd say the vast majority of people that use EDA software want it to do two things well: Let us capture a schematic and layout a PCB. That's it. We don't need integrated FPGA tools, MCAD, MCU programming or the ability to toast bread.
We just want to layout circuit boards. If I want to do MCAD I can export my board as a STEP file and bring it into a 3D package. (That said, easy export with a leading CAD package wouldn't be a bad thing per say, but the majority of users don't need the actual MCAD functionality integrated into their EDA tools. I think Altium has proven that people don't want tons of disparate things bolted onto their EDA software.)
When you try to integrate everything under the sun into one package, it *always* ends up a huge, bloated mess. Functionality is likewise *rarely* better (or even close to) standalone packages.
Sure, there is a small percentage of users (large companies mostly) that could benefit from a streamlined ECAD-MCAD-Manufacturing package, but they're already using $100,000 packages that do this and you're not likely to break into that market for quite some time.
Why not stick to making Eagle a modern EDA tool first? And keep it simple, please. Engineers *hate it* when companies take otherwise good software and ruin it by bolting on everything plus the kitchen sink.
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Matt:
he he he.
I can see where things are going and it looks promising.
I know many here don't care for an integrated approach but I have been doing the export to STOP, import into Solidworks since Altium 1st allowed for STEP integration. While it was a big step forward, it is static process.
Some other thoughts:
1.) PCBs are a mechanical device with electrical design rules. Any good PCB design starts at the solid modeling phase. Having a tool that can go both directions seamlessly is a big deal. There is quite a bit of back and forth when doing anything non-trivial.
2.) STEP is a very bloated format. I have assemblies that are several hundred megabytes without working very hard. A unified tool working in the native 3D model format is where things need to go. Working with non-trivial boards is difficult. I generally use very accurate models which always pushes envelope. (Pretty pictures sell new projects).
3.) Exporting step and importing into another tool means you lose all of the parametric constraints/mates. This is one aspect of PCB design that needs improved. Parametric relationships between parts is where things need to go.
Altium/Dassault have a PCB tools that does some level of b-directional communication (it was branded PCBWorks) but I don't believe you can get the plugin for the full version of Altium.
I will be curious (and patient) to see what you guys come with.
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Our goal at Autodesk goes beyond feature parity. Sure, we know we need comprehensive solutions for routing, design reuse, hierarchy, libs, data management, mcad integration, etc. ...but there's SO much more we can do if we integrated these capabilities at some level. And truth is, we have a bit of a blank slate insofar as we have a lot to build from, but a lot of "net-new" stuff to build. It's a shame really, just trying to be patient long enough for this all to take place.
Matt,
While you and us Eagle users are being patient, and waiting for all that magic to happen -- why can't Autodesk be patient too, and postpone the fleecing of Eagle users until you have something really strong to offer?
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It has happened.
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It has happened.
To be clear, it appears there is still a free tier for hobbyist use with an 80cm2 board size restriction. However, if you want to go beyond that board size you're stuck with a $495 USD a year subscription. Now, I don't have the old Cadsoft pricing archived but I'm pretty sure that less than $495 would have bought you a permanent (non-commercial) license for Eagle that would handle any size board.
Remember folks, Autodesk promised in July 2016 (on this board, in writing (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/autodesk-buys-eagle/msg977529/#msg977529)) that they weren't making Eagle subscription only, then by Jan the next year they did make it subscription only, and now they've effectively upped the price to $495 per annum for any user who can't live with a tiny board size - there appear to be no intermediate offers between "free for hobbyists on tiny boards" and "the full monty". As someone pointed out a while back, it seems that they just want to advertise the relative attractiveness of KiCad.
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To be clear, it appears there is still a free tier for hobbyist use with an 80cm2 board size restriction. However, if you want to go beyond that board size you're stuck with a $495 USD a year subscription. Now, I don't have the old Cadsoft pricing archived but I'm pretty sure that less than $495 would have bought you a permanent (non-commercial) license for Eagle that would handle any size board.
Remember folks, Autodesk promised in July 2016 (on this board, in writing (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/autodesk-buys-eagle/msg977529/#msg977529)) that they weren't making Eagle subscription only, then by Jan the next year they did make it subscription only, and now they've effectively upped the price to $495 per annum for any user who can't live with a tiny board size - there appear to be no intermediate offers between "free for hobbyists on tiny boards" and "the full monty". As someone pointed out a while back, it seems that they just want to advertise the relative attractiveness of KiCad.
2014 pricing here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140911020927/http://www.cadsoftusa.com/shop/pricing/ (https://web.archive.org/web/20140911020927/http://www.cadsoftusa.com/shop/pricing/)
Their pricing did not vary much year-to-year, apart from small incremental increases.
New point releases were free. Major releases (e.g. 6.x, 7.x) were not, but the price was discounted if you already had a license for the previous version.
I have a 1 user unlimited professional version with Layout + Schematic + Autorouter. My last upgrade cost to get me to 7.1 in Dec 2014 was USD $549. I skipped 7.0 because of the new Flexera licensing manager they put in, and then removed in 7.1 due to customer outcry. I don't have records of what eagle originally cost when I purchased it in 2000 (I think it was vers 3.x and on the order of USD $1200).
The $549 major release recurring cost sounds like a bargain now, unlike the noise autodesk was making about what a great cost savings ALL users will experience with the subscription model.
Good riddance, eagle.
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Actually this has turned out to be a nice deal for me. I already have an Eagle Standard subscription and with this change Autodesk has added Fusion 360 Commercial to my license.
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Also, eagle has always been supported on Linux. All you Linux users should take note that Linux is NOT included as a supported platform for Fusion 360:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Fusion-360.html
Maybe something "off the menu" is offered for Linux eagle without incurring the full fusion subscription cost, or are Linux users just expected to pay $495 anyway and too bad?
Or, is this a sign of the end of Linux support?
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Actually this has turned out to be a nice deal for me. I already have an Eagle Standard subscription and with this change Autodesk has added Fusion 360 Commercial to my license.
Just be sure to never let it lapse, or the Standard license will be gone forever.
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Also, eagle has always been supported on Linux. All you Linux users should take note that Linux is NOT included as a supported platform for Fusion 360:
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Fusion-360.html
Maybe something "off the menu" is offered for Linux eagle without incurring the full fusion subscription cost, or are Linux users just expected to pay $495 anyway and too bad?
Or, is this a sign of the end of Linux support?
They're still two separate applications with different installers. I'd expect Eagle to work with Linux as long as Autodesk says it's supported.
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Just be sure to never let it lapse, or the Standard license will be gone forever.
Yep, I'm aware of that.
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It's now also part of the Inventor / Product Design & Manufacturing suite, see screenshot of an email I received today. What's Eagle Premium? :o I'll have a look at it, but prob won't make use of it. (Recent convert from Ultiboard to KiCAD here.)
Ben
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What's Eagle Premium? :o I'll have a look at it, but prob won't make use of it. (Recent convert from Ultiboard to KiCAD here.)
Ben
Eagle Premium is Eagle with no restrictions on layers, schematic sheets, or PCB size.
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And here it comes. Fusion Jan 2020 update.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMFRioFxcbw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMFRioFxcbw)
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And here it comes. Fusion Jan 2020 update.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMFRioFxcbw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMFRioFxcbw)
Yeah, this is where I said they were going when Sam Sattel posted his rant against exchange standards. They don't want someone to be able to take their design out of the Autodesk walled garden, they want you to be locked into their application forever.*
*access to your designs dependent on Autodesk not cancelling your product
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Did they drop the XML format yet? Or the user scripts?
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Did they drop the XML format yet? Or the user scripts?
What will the next goalpost be after this one finally falls (in a long line of things they said they wouldn't do but eventually did)?
They're doing an integration with Fusion 360. It's not done yet, but when they consider it ready standalone Eagle is toast. And in the actual video linked above, they speak in a derogatory fashion about exchange formats and proudly claim they want their program to be the one source of truth for a design.
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Hi Folks!
Let me just be sure and set the record straight on a few items then Ill go back to building awesomeness (ie electronics design, mfg, sim, 3D modeling, surface modeling, thermal analysis, generative design). What @macegr said doesnt accurately represent the opinions or views of Autodesk or our (read: my) overall product strategy or vision. I just want to take the high road here and at the risk of feeding the trolls, ensure I clarify a few important questions that are coming from people's genuine uncertainty or concern...And @macegr I welcome your feedback anytime. I just dont want to tip this in the direction of opinions == fact.
Firstly, we have gone to great lengths to ensure that the EAGLE XML files are actually still accessible however with any application that stores versions of files / data anywhere other than your desktop, we zip them. The FBRD, FSCH, FLBR files that fusion uses internally and which can be saved locally are zip files (raw eagle XML files can be exported to your desktop using the File->Export command). Rename them and unzip them and eagle XML is inside. We do this for speed in transferring the files to the web. Smaller file, smaller payload, faster performance. That's all. Nothing magical or sinister in there. But it also enables us to bundle a thumbnail so they show on the web as they do on the desktop.
We are not going to do away with this as there is no performance benefit to obfuscating what's inside. I would emphasize that virtually all other tools aside from EAGLE / Fusion360 electronics are indeed obfuscating the data (whether deliberately or not, I am not going to speculate) and we have taken- and continue to take a different path. ULPs still work in the new environment. SCR files (generally) continue to work but where they dont, we have plans to address these things in different ways (new menuing and display options in fusion mean changes to shortcuts and key bindings, etc will have to be mapped to a different UI/UX toolkit we use however one aspect of our test automation suite uses SCR files so it would make zero sense for us to scrap this). What's more, Fusion uses Python for scripting and I can only say that it would be, in my view, a "miss" if at some point we didnt create python bindings for all of this.
WRT interexchange files, they are a disaster and anyone that has ever rebuilt 00's of joints in a real, meaningful mechanical design knows the value of have true, parametric timeline awareness with every geometry. If you are not building commercial products or working across a team this may seem tolerable but having done this, I can tell you that creating a real binding between a sketch in a mechanical timeline and a boardshape in 2D PCB, and having spline curves that behave as spline curves and not approximations that fail to be editable...this is important to me. As you start to explore the tools, Id expect you'll find this to be the case too.
WRT desktop eagle, killing the bird is not particularly useful (I was more about Excite Bike than Duck Hunt...long-time fan of modding, sorry) and the SW you have will continue to run from the new entitlement. What we had done was to migrate your license to a Fusion license in a way that is transparent so that all EAGLE licenses (purchased from Autodesk) that are valid continue to enable EAGLE and will enable Fusion 360 as well. The only exception will be free where there was only a login, and you will have to register for the Fusion Hobbyist Version however that will enable EAGLE free as well.
Hope that clarifies and if you have questions or concerns, Im happy to try and answer things I can!
Best regards
Matt Berggren
Director - Autodesk
Fusion360, Electronics, EAGLE, Tinkercad
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I just want to take the high road here and at the risk of feeding the trolls, ensure I clarify a few important questions that are coming from people's genuine uncertainty or concern...
You might want to start from a different place than straight out insulting your critics and customers who have doubts on where you're going. It's exactly that kind of tone that gains Autocad a reputation for arrogance. People have concerns about whether they are being listened to and products being shaped so they they serve customers, or whether the products are being shaped merely to maximise customer lock-in and revenues.
Also there are concerns about whether any promises made will be kept as they conspicuously haven't been in the past - i.e. the whole "It isn't going subscription only" thing and then within 6 months it does.
If I were to follow your example in 'how not to phase things' this former statement would include something like: ".. at the risk of engaging with proven liars...". See, how do you like being talked to like that?
...knows the value of have true, parametric timeline awareness with every geometry.
...creating a real binding between a sketch in a mechanical timeline and a boardshape in 2D PCB...
You might also want to try using English instead of a mix of technobabble and marketingese.
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Let's start with that I have first seen Autodesk Eagle today at work. My coworker showed it because he got the january update.
And it looks like you got some decent work done to get from an outdated but reliable application to something modern with more features.
Firstly, we have gone to great lengths to ensure that the EAGLE XML files are actually still accessible however with any application that stores versions of files / data anywhere other than your desktop, we zip them. The FBRD, FSCH, FLBR files that fusion uses internally and which can be saved locally are zip files (raw eagle XML files can be exported to your desktop using the File->Export command).
Ah cool. One of the main benefits isn't specifically now, although it does work nice with git, but in the future when porting to other applications due to unforseen events.
UPs still work in the new environment.
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What's more, Fusion uses Python for scripting and I can only say that it would be, in my view, a "miss" if at some point we didnt create python bindings for all of this.
Well, that is an understandable path forward. Python is amazing for those duct tape and hotglue projects.
If only you could understand the sacrifice you ask people to make to get into a (lifetime) subscription to a tool. It is difficult to convince anyone to go from the older but infinite license model to a subscription. We have to do minor updates on board files 20 years old. Yes, products in some industries actually are in production for that long!
Maybe we're odd. But I cannot convince anyone to upgrade our software to any newer thing due to this unpredictable license fee a year problem.
Do you offer 10 year contracts?
...knows the value of have true, parametric timeline awareness with every geometry.
...creating a real binding between a sketch in a mechanical timeline and a boardshape in 2D PCB...
You might also want to try using English instead of a mix of technobabble and marketingese.
You are not aware of the capabilities of the sketches and timeline in Fusion 360?
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...knows the value of have true, parametric timeline awareness with every geometry.
...creating a real binding between a sketch in a mechanical timeline and a boardshape in 2D PCB...
You might also want to try using English instead of a mix of technobabble and marketingese.
You are not aware of the capabilities of the sketches and timeline in Fusion 360?
It's bad enough having to try to decode a 63 word run-on sentence. Requiring an audience of Eagle users to also have to understand Fusion 360 terminology before they can comprehend it borders on deliberate cruelty (to both readers and the English language).
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What @macegr said doesnt accurately represent the opinions or views of Autodesk or our (read: my) overall product strategy or vision. I just want to take the high road here and at the risk of feeding the trolls, ensure I clarify a few important questions that are coming from people's genuine uncertainty or concern...And @macegr I welcome your feedback anytime. I just dont want to tip this in the direction of opinions == fact.
To be frank, the things you've said don't accurately represent Autodesk's overall product strategy or vision either. That's not an opinion or trolling, it's observable and factual.
I'd like to get a straight answer about Linux support in the future. Will there be a professional, paid version of Eagle available on Linux a year from now? Five years?
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Hi,
I opened one of my Eagle Pcb designs in Fusion 360 (schematic & Pcb) and got the new ribbons etc.........I presume thats the January 2020 update.
In Eagle, if I DELETE a Pcb trace it resorts back to ratsnest. I can then re-lay that track. In Fusion 360 it deletes the trace ok, but no ratsnest, it's gone........so you HAVE to use the rip up tool.
In Fusion360 you have disabled CTRL-Z to undo, so you HAVE to use the UNDO button on the toolbar.
The GUI is quite slow, i.e. moving a dense Pcb around the screen (i7 8700K, 32gb ram, SSD).
I had two 5 minute sessions with Fusion360 Pcb editor and managed to crash the program both times.
If that's it, then it's not ready for prime time.......
Ian.
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Fusion 360 Plus Eagle Standard $100 USD annual price. Was told it would not go up in the future. Not sure if i can share this but i already took advantage of it so have at it.
https://store.autodesk.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=adskeren&id=QuickBuyCartPage
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Was told it would not go up in the future.
I would not take their word on that - we were all told they had no intenetion to make it subscription based and look what happened.
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Fusion 360 Plus Eagle Standard $100 USD annual price. Was told it would not go up in the future. Not sure if i can share this but i already took advantage of it so have at it.
https://store.autodesk.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=adskeren&id=QuickBuyCartPage (https://store.autodesk.com/store?Action=DisplayPage&Env=BASE&Locale=en_US&SiteID=adskeren&id=QuickBuyCartPage)
As per the other thread you posted in this is not the case for all and NFW would I pay anyone $100 on the basis of your link alone !
Might be nice for those of you in the USA but here in Oz $590 (circa $400USD) is the going rate for the package. I will stick to my FREE sub $100k USD turnover version of Fusion.
Had a quick play with it last night over here too. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/fusion-360-just-added-eagle-inside-it (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eda/fusion-360-just-added-eagle-inside-it)!-thoughts/msg2885728/#msg2885728
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...
Hope that clarifies and if you have questions or concerns, Im happy to try and answer things I can!
Best regards
Matt Berggren
Director - Autodesk
Fusion360, Electronics, EAGLE, Tinkercad
Matt: We still have not heard Autodesks's position on continuing Linux support for Eagle. What is the roadmap.
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The current rollout in F360 is not even remotely close to ready. Thanks but no thanks, I am not going to be an Alpha tester.
I have so many mixed feelings about rolling up all the software that contributes to my living into a cloud based, no-roadmap, constantly changing solution. Overall, it seems to be going in a productive direction, but we now have no control over our data and no way to predict what will be happening in the future.
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I'm tempted to give it a go at the discounted price, unless someone can recommend a free or perpetually licensed MCAD package with similar capability?
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I'm tempted to give it a go at the discounted price, unless someone can recommend a free or perpetually licensed MCAD package with similar capability?
For the price, nothing is even remotely close in aggregate capabilities. Everytime I am tempted to complain about something, I think about the cost relative to Solidworks Premium, 3rd Party rendering, Altium Designer, and Mastercam which add up to about $35,000 plus $4,000/annual maintenance.
I use F360 to design and machine aerospace parts on 7 axis mill turn and 5 axis milling machines in addition to the EE design and integration that I have been doing with Eagle. Perfect? Nope. High value? Yep.
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I'm tempted to give it a go at the discounted price, unless someone can recommend a free or perpetually licensed MCAD package with similar capability?
Please remember that the issue in this thread is Eagle in Autocad's hands, not Fusion 360 as a whole.
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I am a 17 year old student and since I have not spent any money at the program (students program thingy) I may have no right to say anything but still here is my opinion:
When I was first introduced to PCB design at all when I was 10 eagle caught my attention. Probably because it was the best I could get at the time being. I like the features and all, and as years went on I stuck to Eagle. After autodesk had their fun with eagle and added some nice miniscule features it was more fluent to use and the UI itself became way more intuitive than the old garbage so that was a legit improvement in my view (personal opinion).
It is not flawless tho and seeing how things are going is rather depressing. I think we all just want a piece of software that we can buy and done, use it as much as we want to. After all PCB design people dont really care about the mechanical design stuff and fusing the whole thing with Fusion is pointless. You can give us the option but dont force us. The conversion from PCB to Fusion is horrible because 9 times outta 10 you have to use the part that has no 3D package anyways and then you give the call to the mechanical design department to design an eclosure based on simple dimensions in X Y Z maybe with a sketch and thats all you need. (Oh and BTW we dont talk about autorouters, ever)
It would be also nice to see something new built from the ground up. Improving software that is already way too old fashioned wont really be appealing. No matter how thick the paint is the engine under the bonet is the same. Even tho I am stuck with eagle because simply I have been using it for too long I would like a change in a different better experience of doing my hobby and hopefully future job with more ease and comfort. After all eagle was meant to do one thing: design PCBs. No more. Force fusing it with Fusion wont make the ground-breaking difference, not feature wise neither cost wise. Just make something new and more interesting to look into (something that will work not something that something that already sort of works /cough-eagle-coughcough/) but I doubt Autodesk would be the one.
(this is all personal opinion, I dont really understand bussiness strategies.)
(apologies if I completely missed the point here. If nobody likes this post Ill make it disappear. Also I am not native speaking, sorry for the grammar)
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Told ya' so!
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Even tho I am stuck with eagle because simply I have been using it for too long
You're not stuck. Download KiCAD, Diptrace, etc., and dedicate a day or so over the next few months on each one. You will soon find a decent alternative that you can work with.
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I spent more time going through Fusion360 Electronics and continue to be disappointed.
1. The initial release is beta, if I am being generous. Autodesk response is effectively "Calm down, this is the initial release"
2. The implementation is largely regular Eagle running inside an F360 window. But without key features like keyboard shortcuts and other key features hidden or obfuscated.
3. The Eagle cloud based library management system (library.io) is not compatible with F360. You can import a library, but you cannot push it back to standalone Eagle.
4. To import an existing project into F360, I have to create a new empty project and then sync a separate schematic and separate board file to that empty project file. So, you end up with 3 files that need to be opened for a single project. Just like standalone Eagle - if you open a Schematic or Board file alone - you are likely to damage the sync between them. This is among the most baffling concept in Eagle that has apparently become even more baffling in Fusion360.
It appears that Autodesk is posturing to eliminate Eagle sooner rather than later - which has me very nervous. They will not address that particular concern in a meaningful way. At the moment Eagle still works and appears to be capable to pushing to F360 - but Autodesk has the ability to flip the switch at any moment. On the customer side, it feels like I have a gun pointed at me.
Perhaps over time, Autodesk will shed some of the silly Eagle legacy ankle shackles - but this initial rollout is not promising at all. It is all the same dumb things I have painfully learned to workaround along with another round of dumb things layered on top.
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2. The implementation is largely regular Eagle running inside an F360 window. But without key features like keyboard shortcuts and other key features hidden or obfuscated.
I was literally just having a conversation with a friend about how utterly useless and dumb Eagle's default keyboard shortcuts are, compared to basically any other package (certainly KiCad and Altium). But the "regular eagle running inside F360" I tend to agree with. A few things are noticeably better - the button UI is an improvement (I think) and the 3D<>PCB interaction is WILDLY faster and more useful. The thing that most annoys me is that both the schematic and PCB windows still render like crusty garbage on high res displays. Can't wait for a new rendering engine.
3. The Eagle cloud based library management system (library.io) is not compatible with F360. You can import a library, but you cannot push it back to standalone Eagle.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I've been using managed libraries for a couple designs now (since it was the only way to get 3D models), and all the managed libraries I use in standalone eagle are right there in Fusion360 already, exactly as I expected. If for some reason you want to export managed>unmanaged, I know you can from the standalone library editor in Eagle. Not sure if Fusion360 or library.io on the web have interfaces to export, but you can certainly make an unmanaged copy with Eagle standalone. Now, I have no intention of doing so, now that data management/permissions/sharing is sane and workable on a team. It was much more requisite on the last project when I had to "hand over" the finished goods to the client, but not my Autodesk account password.
4. To import an existing project into F360, I have to create a new empty project and then sync a separate schematic and separate board file to that empty project file. So, you end up with 3 files that need to be opened for a single project. Just like standalone Eagle - if you open a Schematic or Board file alone - you are likely to damage the sync between them. This is among the most baffling concept in Eagle that has apparently become even more baffling in Fusion360.
I haven't personally tried it, but my buddy when we were playing on the phone just now didn't seem to run into anything odd here - pretty sure he just uploaded his .pcb and .sch and opened them right up.
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I was literally just having a conversation with a friend about how utterly useless and dumb Eagle's default keyboard shortcuts are, compared to basically any other package (certainly KiCad and Altium).
I don't use the defaults - I have mapped my own and created various SCR and ULP's that give me the functionality I wanted. Fusion 360 does not support those keyboard bindings yet. Cuts my speed in half since I need to mouse around and click through menus.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I've been using managed libraries for a couple designs now ......
Fusion 360 can download managed libraries but it CANNOT push them back. As soon as a library is in Fusion 360, the edits and additions cannot be pushed back to libraryIO system for use in Eagle.
This means the the two parallel systems cannot interact with each other - it's one or the other in a practical sense.
I haven't personally tried it, but my buddy when we were playing on the phone just now didn't seem to run into anything odd here - pretty sure he just uploaded his .pcb and .sch and opened them right up.
Yes - you can simply open an SCH or BRD file, no problem. The problem is that those files are not linked anymore. You have to jump through hoops to keep the files linked.
Considering that all projects need to have the schematic data robustly linked to the PCB layout data - there should never be two files and there should be nothing the user can do to disrupt the consistency of the data used in schematics and PCB layout. In F360 - we now have 3 files per project. 1 file to hold the other two files. Messing with any one of them individually will damage your project. Is this 1988 again?
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My disappointment with the Autodesk Eagle team continues to grow.
I am just baffled at how they are going about this transition to the Fusion 360 platform which is haphazard if I am being generous. The bigger problem is the outward facing people are either silent or elusive when asked direct questions. When I asked why it is so difficult to import an existing Eagle project into Fusion - the response was effectively "We don't really care about that.....this is the new era".
I have dozens of active projects comprised of about 40 PCB designs, but Autodesk thinks it is ok to create a convoluted process to migration. It is literally easier to migrate an Eagle project to Altium Designer than it is to Fusion 360.
What?
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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.
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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/ (https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/january-27-2020-product-update-whats-new/)
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• 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.
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'Tip Top' I would think is a very subjective technical term depending if you are the user or the seller/developer of ;)
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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.
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• 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. :-DD :-DD :-DD :-DD
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Fusion 360 has a free no limitation hobby license and now includes ECAD with eagle premium features. This is a boon for hobbyists.
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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.
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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. :palm:
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. |O
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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/ (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 ::)
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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/ (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!
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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.
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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.
Not just desktop, non-integrated Eagle, but Eagle on Linux. It's hard to phrase that as anything other than a product kill, though Autodesk will try.
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BTW, integration into Fusion will also be the third major Eagle GUI overhaul in the last 4 years. Take that as you will.
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Not really - everything up to this point has been largely incremental. Lipstick on a pig......
Fusion360 is the first effort to enter the 21st century.
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Not much in this update directly for Eagle users other than maybe the Team side of things. This only went live today.
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/march-2020-product-update-whats-new/ (https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/march-2020-product-update-whats-new/)
The major update of note is the refinement of the 3D sketching capabilities and Fusion now has a built in Slicer capability for 3D printing. Early quick look at the 3D printing side of it and video here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/3d-printer-yet/msg2958130/#msg2958130 (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/3d-printer-yet/msg2958130/#msg2958130)
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Please, avoid trying to design something in Fusion Electronics. I've been pulling my hair for the last week. |O
There are more bugs than features. It is a joke. I hope they get their s**t together soon because releasing this "thing" to the public is not serious. :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
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Please, avoid trying to design something in Fusion Electronics. I've been pulling my hair for the last week. |O
There are more bugs than features. It is a joke. I hope they get their s**t together soon because releasing this "thing" to the public is not serious. :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm:
I made this determination after about 30 minutes.
It is currently a sad little experiment that should not have escaped the developers test environment. I do, however, believe they will get it dialed in in due time. The major alarm for me is the initially, they BROKE the existing workflow and I had no immediate fallback. They fixed that so at least I can function normally until they get F360 Electronics to a point of usability.
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I made this determination after about 30 minutes.
It is currently a sad little experiment that should not have escaped the developers test environment. I do, however, believe they will get it dialed in in due time. The major alarm for me is the initially, they BROKE the existing workflow and I had no immediate fallback. They fixed that so at least I can function normally until they get F360 Electronics to a point of usability.
Sadly I was too excited about the possibilities it promised that I kept lying to myself until half an hour ago. I've spent a couple hours routing a PCB (the same I've needed a whole week fighting Fusion to design the schematics, footprints and packages for) and in this amount of time I must have saved at least 5 times. Suddenly Fusion crashes and when I open it back up all the routing is lost in the 2D PCB but present on the 3D PCB. No way of getting it back there, all the "versions" saved on the last couple of hours of the 2D PCB (what would be the .brd in Eagle) are identical.
Yeah, it looks cool and someday it will be a nice program, but man they shot themselves in the foot.
I expect it will be at least a year until it is somewhat usable. The amount of bugs is staggering. I haven't seen anything this bad in a long time.
It was too good to be true... Now I get why they give it away for free with an Eagle License... because it is useless!
(https://autodesk.i.lithium.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/741664iD2DBEAD49B30AA48/image-size/large?v=1.0&px=999)
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Happy to keep my stand-alone copy of Eagle professional version 6.5.0 from back in 2013. There is no footprint that I have not been able to make myself and no board I haven't been able to route. I'm 56 years old and it will probably last for what I need to do for the rest of my life. No, I don't have integrated Spice, but have never needed it in my field.
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Happy to keep my stand-alone copy of Eagle professional version 6.5.0 from back in 2013. There is no footprint that I have not been able to make myself and no board I haven't been able to route. I'm 56 years old and it will probably last for what I need to do for the rest of my life. No, I don't have integrated Spice, but have never needed it in my field.
Me too!....have V6.5 Pro key as purchased Dec.2013.......always in reserve to CircuitStudio.
Always liked Eagle, just hated the component library management.
Ian,
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Hi all,
my few adds to the conversation. First, in general I think the whole idea behind it is not bad. To get the pcb into 3D and design around it is ok. And I disagree with the sentence that professionals will not design electronic and mechanic - real professionals will not use fusion 360 at first place and apparently Autodesk do not believe that Eagle was ever a professional softwate (they might have $$$ data to back it up).
Totally agree with all of you that all this integration is a disaster so far. Eagle was not 100% intuitive software but you could get used to it. Now I don't even no where are my files, where are the libraries. Can't modify library.
For example, I have typical SOIC 74HC595 in the project from standard eagle library. it does not have a proper 3D model, so I wanted to change it (using not so bad generator), but... can't overwrite the 3D in the original library. I can make a copy of the library, but the components are already in the design so I would need to delete them and add and connect again :(
Also, there's no print in the option, I need to type "print" like in 1980s :/
and as I am writing this post, my computer is calculating cut in the case. By default it overlaped to the board, so it's cutting through the layers. 2019 i9, 32GB RAM :):)
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real professionals will not use fusion 360 at first place and apparently Autodesk do not believe that Eagle was ever a professional softwate (they might have $$$ data to back it up).
I totally disagree. I do agree that F360 isn't TOP TIER professional, the likes of Inventor or Creo or ProE, etc. But plenty of those compete with Solidworks for the professional dollar, and I'd buy Fusion 10 times before I'd buy Solidworks once - as many in this space have.
I think the differentiation is pretty analogous to Eagle vs TOP TIER professional EDA software - nobody evaluating "Allegro vs Altium" thinks "but what about Eagle?" But PLENTY of companies doing legitimate, professional design work just don't have design or business rationale to sink that much money into CAD software, and land on Eagle.
Totally agree with all of you that all this integration is a disaster so far. Eagle was not 100% intuitive software but you could get used to it. Now I don't even no where are my files, where are the libraries. Can't modify library.
For example, I have typical SOIC 74HC595 in the project from standard eagle library. it does not have a proper 3D model, so I wanted to change it (using not so bad generator), but... can't overwrite the 3D in the original library. I can make a copy of the library, but the components are already in the design so I would need to delete them and add and connect again :(
Also, there's no print in the option, I need to type "print" like in 1980s :/
I do agree that the integration is, at this point, unusable, but I think the UI troubles are mostly just a matter of getting used to a new paradigm. And I do think that, in the long run, the "Fusion 360" experience will be much more straightforward and approachable than the Eagle one. For now, the problem is that it's a mishmash of both, slowly but surely plodding through all the legacy and debt that Eagle brings.
The real reason I think it's completely unusable is just that it crashes constantly and takes your data with it. It's simply not stable enough for production use yet (the Electronics workspace, specifically).
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I totally disagree. I do agree that F360 isn't TOP TIER professional, the likes of Inventor or Creo or ProE, etc. But plenty of those compete with Solidworks for the professional dollar, and I'd buy Fusion 10 times before I'd buy Solidworks once - as many in this space have.
I think the differentiation is pretty analogous to Eagle vs TOP TIER professional EDA software - nobody evaluating "Allegro vs Altium" thinks "but what about Eagle?" But PLENTY of companies doing legitimate, professional design work just don't have design or business rationale to sink that much money into CAD software, and land on Eagle.
Perhaps I am a good example along with many of the companies that I work with.
I used Solidworks since 1998 along with Mastercam and Camworks. All of which are expensive, professional packages that have a lot to offer. About 2.5 years ago, I was faced with the annual maintenance of Solidworks and Mastercam which was about $3k plus the penalties for skipping previous maintenance coming to about $5k.
I decided to try Fusion360 on a trial to see how it goes.....it went great. I transferred a very complex and very expensive product design with about 1,000 parts over to Fusion. It is a tightly integrated project with a dozen+ circuit boards wrapped in a complicated CNC machined enclosure. The sale price for the product is around $20k/ea and sold to very high level businesses that accept nothing less than perfect.
Fusion easily handled ALL of the mechanical design, CNC machining, documentation drawings, marketing renderings and animations. At that time, there was basic integration with Eagle that allowed a very fast workflow to identify and resolve conflicts with EE and ME.
I never looked back. I love Solidworks, but don't miss it for a second. I love MAstercam, but don't miss it for a second. I only made one project in Altium and loved it - Eagle is still quite a distance from Altium but the integration workflow (separate Eagle and Fusion360) is FAR better than Solidwoks/Altium. The F360 integration has a ways to go, but they are making steady progress.
Many business exclusively use F360 and Eagle because they were accessible when they were small and they don't want the learning curve and expense to change. I spoke with the Altium sales person yesterday and told him that to switch I would drastically increase my software expenses, require a huge transition, a big learning curve and the result would not likely be any better from a business perspective.
I design high layer count high-speed impedance controlled PCB's all the time - all of which are somehow integrated into a complex CNC enclosure or requires some complex thermal control design. Fusion360 has simulation tools to help with cooling designs for electronics built-in.
I am not going to burn money on higher end tools just for bragging rights.
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I should add, all the companies I know that transitioned from Eagle to Altium in the past 2 years or so did so for purely workflow-related reasons, and not capability reasons, and workflow is an area Eagle is pushing on HARD right now for development. It's still a mess, but it's very clearly going the right direction. For instance, one company switched because Eagle managed libraries could NOT be shared, and that was an immediate roadblock. The company couldn't (easily) own or control the IP generated by engineers, since it had to be owned by individual subscribers with no method of transfer. That's now completely fixed. The only reason I'd personally do a project in Altium vs Eagle given the choice is that Altium's BOM capabilities and handling of manufacturing data are LIGHTYEARS ahead of eagle. That is, to me, EXTREMELY low hanging fruit in Eagle that just hasn't gotten development priority yet with all the integration work still to do. Ditto KiCad - the crappy workflows around BOM will be easily addressed as soon as Eeschema actually has a Python API, which is on the roadmap (albeit, quite a long way off).
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Hi,
Got it NOW that eagle for itself won´t exist anymore....
Today I want to upgrade my free license to the version, which costs appx 18€/month.
Now it´s fusion only and cost 58€ - Way too much for a hobbyist like me.
Eagle ist now for professionals only, what a shame. :(
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Must correct this.
Got a non commerical license for fusion for one year free, eagle changed from free to premium.
I could open eagle in fusion, but I also could open eagle alone, so actually I´m confident with it.
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So what did you pay?
And is there a link to this offer, or did you negotiate it offline?
Thanks!
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Hi,
Nothing, it´s a one year non-commercial license :
https://www.autodesk.de/products/fusion-360/personal (https://www.autodesk.de/products/fusion-360/personal)
Signed in, download and install it - That was it.
When I´m open up fusion, it shows that is not a testversion but a personal non-commercial version.
And when I´m open up eagle 9.6.2, it shows it is the premium version instead of free.
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Thanks! That is a decent offer from Autodesk.
Just makes you wonder what will happen a year from now... I actually paid (a bit more than 100 Euro) for a one-year Standard license, when Autodesk ran their "last chance to get Eagle Standard" promotion earlier this year. But I ended up not using that 9.5 version yet, and did a couple of designs in my 7.6 version instead. I am not ready to lock myself into their subscription model yet and want to see what they offer me when the first year runs out. They have changed their take on the subscription model a bit too often, so I can't say I trust them on this matter.
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Must correct this.
Got a non commerical license for fusion for one year free, eagle changed from free to premium.
I could open eagle in fusion, but I also could open eagle alone, so actually I´m confident with it.
Be careful you don't lock yourself out of your designs when yout version reverts to the free version. They may make use of features no longer available.
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Actually I think, I could the one year license extend for another year when it´s close to expiration - If not, with the free license you could at least view every file.
Will report it in 12 months.. ;)
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An optional additional explanation is:
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I recently sold a copy of ...
I'm curious when somebody is going to report you here for spamming the forum :popcorn:
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I recently sold a copy of ...
I'm curious when somebody is going to report you here for spamming the forum :popcorn:
I just did.
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I have a full commercial license for Eagle, and have had since the cadsoft days. I have a small business and use both mechanical and ecad as a part of that - prior to my own business I worked for a large firm where I used Altium for ECAD, and on the very rare times that I needed MCAD, I had access to Solidworks.
For the type of work that I do now, I prefer Eagle to Altium - I have gripes about it, but working on small, low speed analog boards, I really like having the schematic on one monitor, and the PCB on a second monitor, and having the two always in sync. Since I get Fusion for free, it is hard to justify the cost to keep a Solidworks licence (about $5K/year), so I use Fusion for the mechanical CAD, and for what I do (mostly sheet metal cabinets) it works fine. I am not impressed with the Eagle from Fusion for a bunch of reasons - the new managed libraries make everything more difficult (in my opinion, library management was a weakness of Eagle, and is now worse). The process of updating an eagle design in fusion takes away what was one of the best features of Eagle.
I just renewed my Eagle/Fusion license, but I am keeping an eye on where Autodesk is going with this, and am thinking about learning KiCAD (if I can figure out how to say it).
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For the third time, I am attempting to get through an entire project in Fusion360 Electronics.
It is still crazy, but at the moment I can get though to the end at least. The first two efforts were total flameouts that could not be finished.
Check out the weird ass library system.
https://youtu.be/Cy7mnUepniY (https://youtu.be/Cy7mnUepniY)
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For the third time, I am attempting to get through an entire project in Fusion360 Electronics.
It is still crazy, but at the moment I can get though to the end at least. The first two efforts were total flameouts that could not be finished.
Check out the weird ass library system.
https://youtu.be/Cy7mnUepniY (https://youtu.be/Cy7mnUepniY)
Because I have the $300 Fusion360 license, I figured I'd try to do something simple with the Electronics/EAGLE thing, which is part of the package.
Total flameout. Trying to navigate the libraries and put parts on a schematic was way more difficult than it should be. Why oh why.
Funny, though, exporting a STEP model of a board from Kicad and importing it into F360 works well.
I mean, I absolutely see the value in having changes made to the PCB layout immediately reflected in the 3D model so the enclosure etc design can continue and be updated. The export-from-Kicad/Import-in-F360 means basically deleting the old board model in F360, importing the update, aligning it, all of that.
But damn, the Autodesk Electronics thing is a disaster.
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But damn, the Autodesk Electronics thing is a disaster.
At least recently - they are willing to admit that in a public way. The first step to solving a problem is to admit you have one.
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Trying to navigate the libraries and put parts on a schematic was way more difficult than it should be.
Hm ? Don´t know this problem here.
It´s all the same like working with eagle 7.0 or others.
BTW, licensed the private fusion 360 version, but using only eagle 9.6, which comes as the premium license version when you´re logged in...
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I'm pretty happy with Fusion360 but the couple of times I tried the electronics part I gave up, even with an extremely simple project of just a few LEDs. Maybe I am simply used to the speed of EAGLE.
Library management somehow seems worse on Fusion. It's probably because I am trying to use v7 libraries but the act of adding a 3D STEP model seems extremely convoluted and difficult.
I wanted 3D models for the boards so I first tried DXF export from v7 (I think there is a better way in v8, right?). But the DXF file took hours to load in Fusion. So I opened my .brd and could get a working model, except that it does not capture the silkscreen layers! As I was using a PCB as a panel, I found a hack somehow by pasting some sort of image as a decal.
When I tried to load legacy files in Fusion, I felt like I could only open the .brd or .sch but never the two in sync.
So I don't really see a good reason to work with finicky cloud software when I have a full v7 license.
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Any news on the future of Eagle on Linux?
I am using Eagle professionally since I am using Linux (long term Windows hater). I really like the integration with Fusion 360 and so does my MCAD colleague who uses Fusion 360 on Mac (also a Windows hater). Our workflow is such, that he gives me a board outline to work with, and some additional space constraints if any, I make the board in Eagle, and push the 3D design to Fusion 360 where he checks the fit. This integration works very well, but we are smart enough not to even try changing the board from Fusion. So, the direction is always Eagle -> Fusion and never the opposite.
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There was a workaround to run Fusion 360 with Linux pre Eagle but I haven't looked at it in the last 6+ months.
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(Recent convert from Ultiboard to KiCAD here.)
Ben
kicad is slowly killing the pcbcad market.
And so they should be able to compete with $20,000 funding each year.
Surprised they didnt take over years ago.
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Any news on the future of Eagle on Linux?
I am using Eagle professionally since I am using Linux (long term Windows hater). I really like the integration with Fusion 360 and so does my MCAD colleague who uses Fusion 360 on Mac (also a Windows hater). Our workflow is such, that he gives me a board outline to work with, and some additional space constraints if any, I make the board in Eagle, and push the 3D design to Fusion 360 where he checks the fit. This integration works very well, but we are smart enough not to even try changing the board from Fusion. So, the direction is always Eagle -> Fusion and never the opposite.
I would be really surprised if Fusion360 was offered in Linux anytime soon, if ever. They have an enormous amount of challenges on their plate and likely little to no interest in supporting another OS that has a modest audience compared to Windows and MACOS. I use Linux and Windows. While I have gripes with Microsoft - the business and professional world is more complete in Windows.
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Has anyone managed to renew the Fusion personal/hobbyist license that gave EAGLE premium for free? Mine expired recently and I'm back to the free version again.
I recall there was some form to fill out, but I couldn't find it seemingly as easily as I did last time.
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You need to download the trial of Fusion, and run the installer.
There is no form on the website. It was some searching for me as well. But then it gets reactivated.
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You need to download the trial of Fusion, and run the installer.
There is no form on the website. It was some searching for me as well. But then it gets reactivated.
Ah, awesome. Thanks! I was right in the middle of a 4 layer board (I suppose I could try and design simpler things, but my projects just always seem to be really complicated). :-DD :phew:
So what I found was that I didnt actually need to download and run the installer, I just logged into my account and then clicked "start free trial" (or something close along those lines, I forget right now) which took me to the download page where I just didnt start the download, and this seems to have reactivated the premium license.
(although I could swear there was a form where I had to specify what type of user I was and what I was doing, but maybe that was only for the first time)
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If you find a bit of spare time or can handle having it on in the background this is worth a listen/watch. I missed it at the time but interesating hearing from some of the heads.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kszb3FPjSpE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kszb3FPjSpE)
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It would be much more interesting to know the roadmap for Eagle standalone...
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It would be much more interesting to know the roadmap for Eagle standalone...
Unfortunately I can see development ceasing on it going forward and not much more than security updates before long and then ceasing much the same as Microsnot 'phased out' W7 and XP.
It would be very hard to see a case for continuing development of Eagle where the $/year license was less than the combined including Fusion. Anyone wanting an anti perpetual rant please piss off in advance!
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It would be much more interesting to know the roadmap for Eagle standalone...
Eagle has no roadmap. It have a grave at the end of its very short remaining road.
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It would be much more interesting to know the roadmap for Eagle standalone...
Eagle has no roadmap. It have a grave at the end of its very short remaining road.
Care to elaborate?
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It would be much more interesting to know the roadmap for Eagle standalone...
Eagle has no roadmap. It have a grave at the end of its very short remaining road.
Care to elaborate?
Watch the video above and then try and find anything similar being said about Autodesk Eagle standalone (crickets). It seems at least to me they have thrown all their resources behind the Fusion integration as a path forward. Still has a way to go too IMO but there is steady signs of progress.
List of upgrades to Eagle last one May LAST year http://eagle.autodesk.com/eagle/release-notes (http://eagle.autodesk.com/eagle/release-notes)
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I guess they realized that it's difficult for Eagle stand-alone to compete with KiCad.
Specially if you take into account the price/quality ratio...
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I guess they realized that it's difficult for Eagle stand-alone to compete with KiCad.
Specially if you take into account the price/quality ratio...
Sort of a self-fulfilling situation there.
I'd still be happily buying new versions of Eagle standalone every year, if I could actually buy the license instead of rent. Yeah, I'd stop if it were rolled into Fusion like they are doing now. So maybe the subscription model's roadkill aroma was a blessing in disguise, forcing many of us to move to other options while watching Eagle bloat up and eventually vanish into the back of a municipal service truck.
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With the advent of good free pcbcad software does anyone actually buy it any more ?
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Eagle is dead... :(
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eagle/eagle-will-be-part-of-fusion360/?action=dlattach;attach=1226247;image)
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/odb-when-will-it-finally-be-available/td-p/9054344/page/2 (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/odb-when-will-it-finally-be-available/td-p/9054344/page/2)
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Surprised they didnt take over years ago.
It's not as finished as even Eagle was in terms of UI and integration between parts.
Seems like all effort went into making cool stuff at lower levels, like using nanometer coordinates for precision and auto-routing differential pair buses, but not into UI and user experience in general. KiCad is still hard to use compared to Eagle: no synchronization between editors, library is a centralized mess, weird key/mouse mapping with no way to reconfigure to make it behave like any other editor a particular user had used to, etc.
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Autodesk started killing Eagle from the very beginning when they introduced Web content into Eagle projects and "urn"s began appearing in DTD.
When projects stopped being strictly local and became online dependent this was the beginning of the end. And now it just finished its way into oblivion.
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:palm: No one 'killed' anything they have just stopped developing Eagle as a platform. Its far from the first bit of software to go this way.
With the advent of good free pcbcad software does anyone actually buy it any more ?
Why do you feel the ongoing need to spray other PCB platforms not of your design AGAIN? :palm:
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:palm: No one 'killed' anything they have just stopped developing Eagle as a platform. Its far from the first bit of software to go this way.
This is exactly the definition of being killed. You can no longer use the software independently of its provider and physically own your work and modify it in a meaningful way with alternative tools (cause they don't exist). Now you have to pay a ransom (subscription fee) recurrently to even access the tools and your work in full capacity.
The only viable alternative is not getting involved with Fusion360 and other products like that in the first place.
And this is a terrible choice for some folks, because from technical point of view Fusion360 is very appealing.
However, the forced online nature of this product combined with monetary burden and bundled DRM makes it plain F dangerous product to use.
And above that it doesn't run on Linux.
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is there a way to get a license for Eagle CAD / Linux?
I have emailed Autodesk multiple times, but they don't respond.
So what am I supposed to do? Even if I move to Fusion, it doesn't run on Linux :-//
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:palm: No one 'killed' anything they have just stopped developing Eagle as a platform. Its far from the first bit of software to go this way.
This is exactly the definition of being killed. You can no longer use the software independently of its provider and physically own your work and modify it in a meaningful way with alternative tools (cause they don't exist). Now you have to pay a ransom (subscription fee) recurrently to even access the tools and your work in full capacity.
The only viable alternative is not getting involved with Fusion360 and other products like that in the first place.
And this is a terrible choice for some folks, because from technical point of view Fusion360 is very appealing.
However, the forced online nature of this product combined with monetary burden and bundled DRM makes it plain F dangerous product to use.
And above that it doesn't run on Linux.
Hardly killed anyone you had or has a perpetual license has had their software killed HOW :palm: Anyone you was on a subscription can go to Fusion for less $/year than they were paying for Eagle standalone. If we assume 'killed' is valid then would I be right to carry on like a frog in a sock about Autocad 2.x (the first CAD software I used) no longer being supported?
Your 'opinion' on license/cloud has ZERO to do with anything being 'killed'!
As to Linux incompatibility build a bridge most of the world just doesn't care :-DD
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is there a way to get a license for Eagle CAD / Linux?
I have emailed Autodesk multiple times, but they don't respond.
So what am I supposed to do? Even if I move to Fusion, it doesn't run on Linux :-//
Regardless of my last post there is a workaround for Linux for Fusion so do some searching.
Why you would want to try and get a license for software that clearly has no forward upgrade path seems like a bad idea.
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So what am I supposed to do?
Convert your ongoing projects and move to KiCad.
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So what am I supposed to do?
Convert your ongoing projects and move to KiCad.
Yep! In KiCad:
File -> Import Project -> EAGLE CAD
There are also some standalone tools/converters, for example, this one can convert your Eagle libraries to KiCad libraries:
https://www.teuniz.net/eagle2kicad/ (https://www.teuniz.net/eagle2kicad/)
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Regardless of my last post there is a workaround for Linux for Fusion so do some searching.
Are you actively trying to piss people off, or just rambling about stuff you don't know about?
Why not give DiTBho some actual information? ???
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Regardless of my last post there is a workaround for Linux for Fusion so do some searching.
Are you actively trying to piss people off, or just rambling about stuff you don't know about?
Why not give DiTBho some actual information? ???
I don't use Linux and last time I came across it was maybe a year ago. Why should it be my job to do a Google search for others? I have no idea if it works with the current version and again not my job and no idea what Linux build the poster is running.
And for those with Google or site search issues I linked it here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/3d-printing/3d-printer-yet/msg2982186/#msg2982186 (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/3d-printing/3d-printer-yet/msg2982186/#msg2982186)
https://all3dp.com/2/fusion-360-for-linux-how-to-install-it/ (https://all3dp.com/2/fusion-360-for-linux-how-to-install-it/)
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I don't use Linux and last time I came across it was maybe a year ago. Why should it be my job to do a Google search for others? I have no idea if it works with the current version and again not my job and no idea what Linux build the poster is running.
If you don't have an answer for him then why do you feel compelled to respond? It reminds me of those people who post answers to questions on Amazon reviews that say "I don't know." :palm:
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I don't use Linux and last time I came across it was maybe a year ago. Why should it be my job to do a Google search for others? I have no idea if it works with the current version and again not my job and no idea what Linux build the poster is running.
If you don't have an answer for him then why do you feel compelled to respond? It reminds me of those people who post answers to questions on Amazon reviews that say "I don't know." :palm:
If you had nothing to add then :wtf: get involved! If people can't do some proactive minimal googling then that is their problem. Since eblaster and yourself decided to weigh in and provide ZERO additional help other than critique my reply how has your addition helped anyone other than your own self righteous egos?
There is several solutions and workarounds for Linux including some topics here as well. Since then I trawled up a link I had read some time ago and passed on with a caveat of not sure if it works now and which of the numerous Linux versions.
The simple answer is Linux is not supported by Fusion 360 the facts are somewhat different but it is a cludge and subject to breaking in the future. My view is if you NEED to use Software package X and it only works on 'CURRENT' Brand A and M operating system it is a simple solution.
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If we assume 'killed' is valid then would I be right to carry on like a frog in a sock about Autocad 2.x (the first CAD software I used) no longer being supported?
Autodesk continued to release new versions of AutoCAD, in order to maintain compatibility with continually changing computer technology and operating systems (while adding features). They fixed bugs, and when enough work and features were done, they'd release a new version that people could buy if they wanted to continue using AutoCAD. This is support.
When you stop supporting and selling a product, that means you no longer fix bugs, you no longer resolve incompatibilities with new operating system releases, and you don't offer new features. It will stop working, the only question is how long until then. This is what people mean when Autodesk "kills" a product, which they have done countless times. Eagle standalone or just Eagle on Linux, is being killed. Not an exaggeration. Some form of Eagle will live on in Fusion, but eventually people's standalone installs of Eagle will not work anymore, and Autodesk is not offering any replacement for that type of product.
You might say that the subscription model is essentially the same as what I described above: your permanent license will eventually be for a piece of software that doesn't work anymore, and you have to keep paying in order to keep using your tools. This is 100% true, and subscription means you pay a little at a time instead of a lump sum. The main difference that makes people recoil from the subscription model is this: when Autodesk stopped supporting Eagle standalone/permanent, people had multiple years to find an alternative and learn to use it, while continuing to use their old product. When Autodesk decides that Eagle in Fusion isn't working and decides to stop supporting it, you may have a month or less to figure out something else. That's the entire base of the complaining.
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When you stop supporting and selling a product, that means you no longer fix bugs, you no longer resolve incompatibilities with new operating system releases, and you don't offer new features. It will stop working, the only question is how long until then. This is what people mean when Autodesk "kills" a product, which they have done countless times. Eagle standalone or just Eagle on Linux, is being killed. Not an exaggeration. Some form of Eagle will live on in Fusion, but eventually people's standalone installs of Eagle will not work anymore, and Autodesk is not offering any replacement for that type of product.
So Farnells prior to Autodesk 'killed' Eagle how many times by version changes and 'making' people buy new versions to keep current? Find me any commercial level software that offers 'free' perpetual upgrades and support for ever?
Autodesk for all their flaws has maintained CAD systems for decades and given a path forward with user files/drawings and data. The word 'killed' implies an end of use/life this is factually incorrect until people run out of Hardware/Operating system compatibility their perpetual licenses will continue to work.
Even now there is multiple paths forward for Eagle users including Fusion or Kicad (tried the latest version and not all bad by any means) with Eagle data. Again far from 'killed'.
When Autodesk decides that Eagle in Fusion isn't working and decides to stop supporting it, you may have a month or less to figure out something else.
Completely unfounded non factual fear and smear :bullshit:
Compared to the seat price of a few decades (well over 10X in actual $) ago Fusion is a complete bargain. Sometime later this year when my three years of FREE Startup license is up I will at this stage stump up the $ and buy a paid seat. Partly because of the mix of Mechanical and Electronics I do and nothing else I can see is as affordable or integrated.
Does it mean I will stay with Fusion forever paying annually :-// Might be in 3-5 years I decide to extract all my data and import it into something else but my crystal ball is really foggy.
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Might be in 3-5 years I decide to extract all my data and import it into something else but my crystal ball is really foggy.
In 3-5 years I doubt they leave you any possibility at all to extract any of your data, and even if you do the data is going to be a useless mess of undocumented proprietary binaries.
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Might be in 3-5 years I decide to extract all my data and import it into something else but my crystal ball is really foggy.
In 3-5 years I doubt they leave you any possibility at all to extract any of your data, and even if you do the data is going to be a useless mess of undocumented proprietary binaries.
And again with the non factual unfounded speculative :bullshit: :palm:
Below a partial list of NON Autodesk proprietary options Fusion currently has available. I see very little that locks me into staying here.
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And again with the non factual unfounded speculative :bullshit: :palm:
OK, let's check if this is currently true just for Eagle. Please find attached Eagle's DTD for v9.6.2 and onward.
Every "urn" attribute in project file compliant to this DTD points to an online resource, so please do two+ things with respect to each type of resource:
1) explain how to get content that URN is pointing to as a local file.
2) provide file format specification for that type of resource.
Optionally, list known software other than Autodesk products that allows meaningful editing of that type of resource.
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As I don't have a paid or for that matter a copy of Eagle installed currently so not likely.
However I just exported a Board and Schematic file from Fusion in Eagle 9.x mode and KiCad opened them both straight up without a fuss. Not that there might be issues I didn't spot but export and loading into KiCad seemed straightforward and not blocked.
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And again with the non factual unfounded speculative :bullshit: :palm:
Guessing what the future holds is by definition - speculative. We all have to make guesses on things that may go sideways. It is quite normal to base those guesses on feelings, not facts. In the case of Audodesk and Eagle - there are little to no facts. Guessing is our only option.
I have personally spoken to numerous people at various levels in Autodesk. When specifically asked about the future of Eagle, the answer is typically silence or a diversion.
In the absence of facts, speculation is the only alternative.
I use Fusion360 daily and generally like it. I do not, however, have any trust in the company at all.
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I have personally spoken to numerous people at various levels in Autodesk. When specifically asked about the future of Eagle, the answer is typically silence or a diversion.
In the absence of facts, speculation is the only alternative.
My experience, having spent the bulk of my career in corporate environments is that response invariably means that the company does not see a long term future in the subject being asked about. If they won't tell you something about their plans with it then the plan is to phase it out in one way or another. When they do see a future, they are excited to paint you a glowing picture of all the improvements the vision they have.
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You might say that the subscription model is essentially the same as what I described above: your permanent license will eventually be for a piece of software that doesn't work anymore, and you have to keep paying in order to keep using your tools. This is 100% true, and subscription means you pay a little at a time instead of a lump sum. The main difference that makes people recoil from the subscription model is this: when Autodesk stopped supporting Eagle standalone/permanent, people had multiple years to find an alternative and learn to use it, while continuing to use their old product. When Autodesk decides that Eagle in Fusion isn't working and decides to stop supporting it, you may have a month or less to figure out something else. That's the entire base of the complaining.
The difference for me is that when software becomes deprecated, I am still in control of when it will 'inevitably' stop working. I can decide to maintain the machine it currently runs on indefinitely, come up with a virtualized solution to continue operating it, and so on. It should be safe to assume that it will be at least possible to access the software, and therefore my data, for a decade or more, provided I archive the software itself and possibly the means of running it (unsupported OS image etc.). That is very different than the situation here, where a company can unilaterally prevent me from continuing to use the software no matter what I (legally) do for literally any reason they choose.
When access to my data, and for some, the product of their life's work, is subject to the whims of a megacorp, I get a little uncomfortable. There are several reasons for this.
When Autodesk in the future decides to stop supporting this product, do they decide to grant a perpetual no-server-check-required license to their users? If not, you will simply be locked out of your data with no recourse; this has happened with DRMed games many times when the company goes out of business or for whatever other reason turns off the license server. You have no control and no knowledge of when this might happen or how long they might deign to give you to get out.
If you switch to a different tool in the future or for any other reason (retirement? career change?) the subscription no longer makes financial sense to maintain. Do you keep paying Autodesk while you are not using their tool just so you can continue to access your data occasionally and non-professionally? Do you spend the effort to extract your data from their clutches and convert it to a more portable format? Do you accept that it's gone to you? None are appealing.
If (more likely when) Autodesk jacks up the subscription price to a point that it doesn't make financial sense, but your data is locked in to their platform, what do you do? You are completely held hostage.
It is not a comfortable position to be in. I'm really not sure why companies are willing to take such risks, but then I am just a hobbyist.
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The difference for me is that when software becomes deprecated, I am still in control of when it will 'inevitably' stop working. I can decide to maintain the machine it currently runs on indefinitely, come up with a virtualized solution to continue operating it, and so on.
I stuck with that mantra for a long time. As the industry makes a slow migration to subscription only options - I decided to look at the financials of it all.
In my case, I need: 3D CAD, ECAD, mech simulation, rendering, animation, CAM 5 axis.
I was using SolidWorks since 1998, MasterCam, and Keyshot. Total initial cost is around $25k and then about $3300/year for maintenance. I used to skip maintenance for a few years, but the companies started imposed heavy penalties.
When I needed ECAD - I was thinking I would just go with Altium Designer - but that was another $11k plus $1500/year for maintenance. At this point - I would be up to $36k and $4800 per year just for me. I ended up going with the low-end Eagle option to save money. Now that Autodesk is integrating Eagle, I have a single piece of software that is only $500/year (for now) and essentially a single learning curve. There is no translation, intermediate files, incompatibilities or a ridiculous work-flow that results in having 5 software vendors.
Do I like the subscription concept and all my data in the cloud? Nope, not even a little.
Do I like saving $36,000 and recurring annual $4800 expenses? Yes.
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And again with the non factual unfounded speculative :bullshit: :palm:
Guessing what the future holds is by definition - speculative. We all have to make guesses on things that may go sideways. It is quite normal to base those guesses on feelings, not facts. In the case of Audodesk and Eagle - there are little to no facts. Guessing is our only option.
I have personally spoken to numerous people at various levels in Autodesk. When specifically asked about the future of Eagle, the answer is typically silence or a diversion.
In the absence of facts, speculation is the only alternative.
I use Fusion360 daily and generally like it. I do not, however, have any trust in the company at all.
It depends on how you look at Autodesk as the Devil Incarnate or a company that has more or less maintained a standard format in DXF for decades with minimal changes to it. I suspect that if I could get hold of the DXF's I created as a Student on Autocad 2.x they could be read by a bunch of current software be it Autodesk or others. Swapping or locking out reverse compatibility to old files would be corporate death.
While PCB designs are way more complex than a 2D drawing providing Fusion/Eagle maintains the option to export in old versions of Eagle then the fear and smear is just that. Not that anyone should 'assume' safety and always having an exit strategy is prudent and in a business setting essential.
The video I linked back a bit https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eagle/eagle-will-be-part-of-fusion360/msg3561812/#msg3561812 (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eagle/eagle-will-be-part-of-fusion360/msg3561812/#msg3561812) shows fairly clearly that standalone Eagle is not going to get any further development other then maybe security patches going forward. For any Hobby level users with only a few 'essential' projects it makes sense to either give Fusions 'free' Hobby license a go or if you want give KiCad a go (or another as it is much improved) and import your Eagle content. But getting out of Eagle to be sensible going forward for any new projects or designs.
As per your last post yep Fusion represents great value over other Seat pricing and linking the Electronic to Mechanical is an extra win.
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I just opened one of my projects in Eagle and got a banner telling me that Eagle will be dead on June 7 2026, with a link to a post (https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/future-of-autodesk-eagle-fusion-360-electronics/?mktvar002=5825936031&utm_medium=product&utm_source=ipm&utm_campaign=5825936dmfusion-360-and-eagle---unification-fy24&utm_id=5825936031)that says
Effective June 7, 2026, Autodesk will no longer sell or support EAGLE. Moving forward, we will continue to invest our energy in Fusion 360 Electronics.
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Every "urn" attribute in project file compliant to this DTD points to an online resource, so please do two+ things with respect to each type of resource:
1) explain how to get content that URN is pointing to as a local file.
2) provide file format specification for that type of resource.
Optionally, list known software other than Autodesk products that allows meaningful editing of that type of resource.
Actually it is worse, since the Urn type does not contain a url. So it can't be dereferenced or downloaded. It doesn't point to an online resource; it asserts that one exists and the Eagle source code knows (knew) how to access it.
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2026...Last a while.
I currently have the problem that my free premium license has expired - now they have thrown me back to free and I can no longer edit my boards if they are larger than 100x80, let alone design new larger on... :P
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2026...Last a while.
I currently have the problem that my free premium license has expired - now they have thrown me back to free and I can no longer edit my boards if they are larger than 100x80, let alone design new larger on... :P
If you're OK with v6.5-8.0, you can try https://github.com/mirai-computing/QEagleScaler to get around the board size issue.
Eagle v6.5 is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BygfxWz33b_Sbl9BY3dwWnRpTDA/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-kjW8u97fQaCm1Dcxgguk_A
Do you need a later version?
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Here are the official downloads for all Eagle versions including V7 and V6 from Cadsoft:
http://eagle.autodesk.com/eagle/software-versions/ (http://eagle.autodesk.com/eagle/software-versions/)