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Questions relating to designing PCBs
By NleahciM
#48486
bigglez wrote:
leon_heller wrote:I was actually addressing his statement about Pulsonix, not the question about Eagle. How is that OT?
Do a search on this group for "leon" and "Pulsonix"...

I noticed that anytime a PCB CAD tool question comes up you
chime in with how wonderful your CAD tool selection was,
how easy it is to use, and how you invented a user's group
for your tool choice.

All that may be true but the Op is an EAGLE user, looking for
EAGLE help, from EAGLE experts (whatever that means).

Perhaps you should be reading along instead of jumping in
with Pulsonix/EasyPC propaganda?

Just one person's opinion...
I'm with you on that one Peter. He's worse than Mac fanboys. Much, much worse.
By Philba
#48518
bigglez wrote:Greetings Phil,
Philba wrote:eagle does have it's inconsistencies but I've come to appreciate some of it's UI. I still think the cut and paste approach is just plain bone headed, though.
How so?

Comments Welcome!
I perhaps should have said "copy and paste". It shows scissors for copy. You have to group select then click on "copy" (which looks like "cut" to a normal person) then it is in the copy buffer. There is no feedback that the copy operation actually happened. You can't copy a single item (you MUST group select). This where modal UIs basically suck.
By Philba
#48519
Sheesh, will you guys stop finding reasons to p*ss on people? Big deal if leon likes pulsonix - don't you have something better to??
By NleahciM
#48521
Philba wrote:Sheesh, will you guys stop finding reasons to p*ss on people? Big deal if leon likes pulsonix - don't you have something better to??
I thought that was all pretty good natured. Don't create drama where there is none.
By Philba
#48526
If it was humor, it sure didn't come across that way. It would be pretty hard to look at that as anything other than a direct criticism. I don't think I created drama - it was there, OT and all.
User avatar
By bigglez
#48533
Greetings Phil,
Philba wrote:I perhaps should have said "copy and paste". It shows scissors for copy. You have to group select then click on "copy" (which looks like "cut" to a normal person) then it is in the copy buffer. There is no feedback that the copy operation actually happened. You can't copy a single item (you MUST group select). This where modal UIs basically suck.
Agreed. That is perhaps the most non-intuitive operation
in the EAGLE GUI. However, it is consistent and
reliable, so once you have it mastered it works well.

You can lasso a single component, if fact you need only
enclose the component's reference point (a small cross
symbol) to use the copy and paste function. Once it's
on the clipboard you can place it on the same sheet,
another sheet, or even close the project and open or
start a new one, to place it. Another nice thing is being
able to stamp out multiple copies of the same clipboard
contents - a lot of "digital" design is repetitive.

Once I came through the initial steep learning curve
on EAGLE, I found many PCB related maintenance
tasks to be quite easy in EAGLE. In particular, starting
a new project by combining sections of other projects,
or extending a design to an extra sheet, or reworking
an existing design to update one or more parts.

I find EAGLE to be good value for my needs, and I'm
delighted to see that many new EAGLE user's are turning
out good work on their first attempt. PCB tools are
not the same as Microsoft Office or other SOHO tools...

Comments Welcome!
Last edited by bigglez on Mon May 19, 2008 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By leon_heller
#48541
Perhaps I am overly enthusiastic about Pulsonix and EasyPC, but they are nice applications, with excellent support. If Eagle users could get CadSoft to be as responsive to their needs as WestDev, it would be a much better product. For instance, I suggested that a useful feature for Pulsonix would be a facility for a track to automatically 'flow' round another track or other feature when routing manually. In a couple of days I got a new version which implemented my suggestion, and it was incorporated in the next release. I don't know of many companies that would do that.

Leon