[time-nuts] Schematic capture, anyone?

NeonJohn jgd at neon-john.com
Sun Feb 26 22:36:03 UTC 2012


I use professionally.  It was the best that our small company could
afford.  Here are some tips that will save you mucho grief.

1) This is the biggie.  Make your own parts library.  Then put any part
that you have to create in that library.  As well, put a copy of any
standard library part in your library AFTER you've verified that the
part, especially the footprint is valid.  Then put that library under
SubVersion or whatever version control system you use.

I call my library 00johh.lbr.  The "00" makes it appear first in the
library list.

2) another biggie.  Validate any part that you take from an Eagle
library.  They are recklessly careless with those parts.  I've found
silk screens on the solder side and even individual pins on the wrong
side.  I lost a board run only once because of this but it was enough to
make me extremely paranoid.

3) LOOK AT YOUR GERBERS!  It takes a pretty long while and it's tedious
work (I print mine out on an 11X17 printer and check off every feature
with a highlighter as I go) but it's vital.  Eagle doesn't always
produce Gerbers like the board appears on the screen.  Especially if you
get caught by #2 above.

I use gerbv which is a Linux tool but I think there's a version for the
mac's almost-unix OS.

John


On 02/26/2012 02:12 PM, Jim Hickstein wrote:
> In case anyone is following my progress, I started with EAGLE.  It works
> fine on the Mac.  I can tell it's not quite native (it even has a man(1)
> page!), but it's no problem.  One afternoon with the tutorial, and I
> have a schematic.

-- 
John DeArmond
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
http://www.neon-john.com    <-- email from here
http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net
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