The latest version of Eagle is released and available for download. We are excited about some of the new Eagle V6 features:
- XML database structure redesign, more flexible and easier to manipulate library and design files.
- Design reuse, now whole sections of merged schematic and PCB design can be cut and pasted into a new design.
- Routing capability enhancements: Added undo/redo logs, increased resolution of internal grids, added differential pair assisted routing, added BGA escape routing.
- Library editor optimization: Connecting multiple pins to a single pad, drawing custom pad shapes, no more limit to the package variants per a single library.
- Layout editor add-ons: Automatic board dimensions, adding restricted areas with cutout polygons, more then one layout per schematic is now supported.
- Add descriptions to your schematic, layout, and library files.
- Define your own context menu.
Since it is a new release we are somewhat apprehensive about jumping straight in. We are looking forward to working with it though.
Does someone known if EAGLE V6 is able to convert design form 5.xx to 6.0 file format?
The beta could. So It would be silly if the final version couldn’t.
It converts them automagically when you save them.
The bad thing it uses the same extension, so you cant tell whether it is v5 or v6.
I would assume it automatically does so, I don’t think you can save a 6 project to 5, but I am pretty sure it can read 5 files and add them to 6 projects.
Those are some welcome features, although some of them just remind me about the sorry state of existing PCB CAD software (not only Eagle). Seriously, working copy/paste and undo/redo are major features in 2011?
Anyway, I am excited. Those two features + assigning multiple pads to a pin are probably my three most often causes of swearing at eagle.
I totally agree. How many times do I have to copy and paste schematics and then re-place and re-route something?
I’ve just installed it and received this message from the update tool:
“WARNING: Most unfortunately, after the whole release process for version 6.0.0 had been finished, it turned out that there is a bug in the polygon handling of the CAM Processor.
If a board contains signal polygons that have their “Orphans” parameter set to “off”, and the CAM Processor is used to generate production data with the “pos. Coord” (positive coordinates) option turned on, and if this actually leads to an offset in the CAM data, it can happen that parts of the signal polygons are not drawn, even though they are not orphans, and vice versa.
This may lead to missing electrical connections or copper in places where this is not intended.
As an immediate workaround you can turn the “pos. Coord” option off.
We are working on a solution for this and will release a fixed version as soon as possible.
Sorry for the inconvenience.”
It will be very good to have Eagle Free/Hobby version with 4 layers support limited to 10cm*10cm.
Anyway before to move on V6 I will wait other user test it ;-)
Cadsoft jumped from Tiger to Snow Leopard and dropped PowerPC support. In other words, EAGLE 5.11 runs on OSX 10.4 G4 & G5 or Intel, but EAGLE 6 seems to require OSX 10.5 and Intel only. As an OSX developer, I know that the only reason they don’t still support PowerPC is that they didn’t bother to build the program correctly. I can’t see how any of the “new” features in Snow Leopard would be useful in EAGLE, much less required. I still build software that runs on all Macs and it’s quite easy. Only rarely are there reasons to restrict the supported platforms.
I guess the Mac world is finally starting to look like the Windows world, where there are so many different versions of the operating system in the field and the company wants people to forget about the old systems but the users prefer to continue running a stable system. I’m no Windows fan, but I run XP in order to have access to LTspice, Code Composer Studio, MPLAB (older versions), etc. Microsoft really wants to discontinue XP, but the users do not want this. It’s looking to me like a similar battle over Tiger (10.4) and PowerPC might occur. My G5 runs EAGLE autorouter so fast that I can’t justify buying a whole new Mac just to run EAGLE 6.
I had some difficulty installing Eagle 6 on my Ubuntu 10.4 distribution (a little old, but I don’t have time to upgrade right now). Basically it needs newer versions of some libraries (libpng, libjpeg, libcypto, libssl) which are not available through the normal update channel on Ubuntu.
It’s not too difficult go work around. I wrote a quick howto and a shell script to build the required versions of the libraries: http://jdesbonnet.blogspot.com/2011/12/installing-cadsoft-eagle-6-on-ubuntu.html