SparkFun Forums

[svet-am]

Professionally, I use Altium DXP which supports a "paste array" features. This comes in very handy when making footprints for BGA's and TQFP's that have many pins.

Essentially, this feature keeps track of pin/pad numeric ID and spacing. So, you select a pad/pin you wish to duplicate and specify a base ID and stepping value. Then, when you paste the array, Altium takes care of the pad spacings and offsets for you.

Does Eagle support this kind of functionality? I've looked and played with the GUI and cannot find it. Is this a little hidden easter egg in Eagle?

Any help on duplicating this functionality with Eagle would be much appreciated.

edit: I had a total n00b moment and posted this in the wrong area. admins please move this post.

[Andrew02E]

If you mean a 'wizard' of sorts, I don't believe that's a standard Eagle feature. There may be a script or ULP out there that could do it, but none that I'm aware of. (cue ULP programmer)
If your pads have a numeric ending to them (ie. A1), Eagle will automatically increment the number if you copy or cut and paste the pad (ie. you can paste A2, A3, and A4 from a paste buffer containing A1). The closest you can come to a step-repeat feature is setting the grid to the pin/pad spacing and copying/pasting the pad multiple times along the grid.
If a 'footprint wizard' feature is hidden in there and someone knows where, I think we'd all love to know.

[emf]

I'm don't know if it is what you're looking for, but there are a few ULPs that generate footprints. The most wizard-like one is make-symbol-device-package-bsdl. I'm not sure if it's installed by default; if it's not, you can download it from cadsoft's website. Open the library editor and type "run make-symbol-device-package-bsdl.ulp" and it should launch. You can load a text file with pin descriptions, then specify the package dimensions and pin spacings in the wizard, and it will generate both the footprint and the symbol. I've used it several times for TQFPs and SOICs. It has a lot of stuff for BGAs, but I've never messed with those. It's not exactly user-friendly, but for eagle it's pretty good.

There are also a few genpkg-* ULPs you can download that generate the footprints for TQFP and SOIC style packages from 20 or so command-line parameters. They're harder to use, but they work as advertised.