EAGLE Tutorial - Part 1 - Control panel

Introduction

In this tutorial, the reader will be guided to create a simple PCB. This page is the part 1 of the tutorial, dedicated to the control panel.

Eagle stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor. It is an electronic CAD software manufactured by CadSoft Computer GmbH, a German company, since 1988. This software is provided with, among other, a schematic capture editor, a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) layout editor, an auto-router, a Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM)... It supports Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. This tutorial has been prepared with the following versions:

Control panel

When EAGLE is started, the following window appears on the screen,this is the control panel, the EAGLE starting window.

Control panel/ EAGLE main window

On the left hand side of the window the user manage existing and new projects and can get an overview about the libraries and settings:

The Arduino MEGA2560 board has been designed with EAGLE. It is provided within the examples:

Project example with the Arduino MEGA2560

Directories

Basicaly, EAGLE stores all the projects and necessary files in the same main folder and creates subfolders to differenciate each projet. In the main menu bar, select Option > Directories:

Directories menu

The following interface allows the user to configure directories. $EAGLEDIR represents the path to the main folder (on my installation it is located in /home/username/eagle-6.5.0/). When a new project is created, a new folder is automatically added in $EAGLEDIR/projects/. The user can specify several folders. It is possible, for example, to have the default libraries available on a network server, and the personal projects in private local folders.

Configuration of directories

Before continuing check that the folder for libraries is configured with the following path:

$EAGLEDIR\lbr

Libraries

On the left hand side of the control panel, click on Libraries to develop the tree and select the library 74xx-eu.lbr. This library is dedicated to TTL Devices (74xx Series from Texas Instruments). Select a device, on the right side the symbol and footprint appear:

Libraries window

New project

To create a new project, select File > New > Project:

Create a new EAGLE project

A new project is automatically added on the left hand side of the window under the branch Project/eagle. Enter you project name, for example FirstPCB:

Specify the project name

Right click on the project and select New > Schematic:

Create a new schematic for the project

A new window is automatically open, this is the Schematic Editor:

New window dedicated to the schematics

The part 2 of this tutotial explains step by step how to create your first schematics.

See also


Last update : 11/25/2019