Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Eagle. A better Visio than Visio

W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm creating a multiple - page flowchart to guide me in
firmware development for a little hobby project.

I Really Like Visio, but I got a headache thinking about
maintaining off - page references on all the sheets and
about Visio's fixed - size symbols. (Perhaps the modern
version of Visio has these features, I dunno.)

My new flowcharts are all in 'Eagle Hobbyist'.
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/shop/eagle-hobbyist-and-education/

Off - page - references are automatic and work properly.
If I need a large 'decision block' or small 'arrow' symbol
I can just create them as library symbols.

Creating and moving curved lines for looping is much easier
in Eagle than in Visio. It's cool having one less piece of
software involved in the creative process.

The finished pages look very 'pro' and are easy to read.

I like this *a lot*.

--Winston
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Winston said:
I'm creating a multiple - page flowchart to guide me in
firmware development for a little hobby project.

I Really Like Visio, but I got a headache thinking about
maintaining off - page references on all the sheets and
about Visio's fixed - size symbols. (Perhaps the modern
version of Visio has these features, I dunno.)

My new flowcharts are all in 'Eagle Hobbyist'.
http://www.cadsoftusa.com/shop/eagle-hobbyist-and-education/

Off - page - references are automatic and work properly.
If I need a large 'decision block' or small 'arrow' symbol
I can just create them as library symbols.

Creating and moving curved lines for looping is much easier
in Eagle than in Visio. It's cool having one less piece of
software involved in the creative process.

The finished pages look very 'pro' and are easy to read.

I like this *a lot*.

I could have told you that years ago. Some of the first symbols I made
were arrows in different size, for just about that purpose :)

However, mostly I use it to draw illustrative diagrams for non-tech
audiences and that doesn't require off-page referencing.

Cadsoft should have a section titled "Whacky uses of Eagle" :)
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
(...)


Do you have a way to export good line work into a separate document?

PDF and Postscript are available and I don't recall installing either
one of those separately. The Postscript output is very nice.

--Winston
 
D

Don Y

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi Winston,

PDF and Postscript are available and I don't recall installing either
one of those separately. The Postscript output is very nice.

Can you export HPGL? Or DXF? Many programs can import that, nicely.
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
(...)


I could have told you that years ago. Some of the first symbols I made
were arrows in different size, for just about that purpose :)

However, mostly I use it to draw illustrative diagrams for non-tech
audiences and that doesn't require off-page referencing.

Cadsoft should have a section titled "Whacky uses of Eagle" :)

That is an extremely good idea.

--Winston
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
But Word deosn't like them. At least Visio can export an EMF file,
which looks nice in Word.

Yeah, Just now I told Acrobat to save in *.doc format.
Open Office couldn't open it properly under either
flavor of .doc it is supposed to support. Dang.
We do block diagrams, generally the first sheet of a schematic, using
Pads Logic, and sometimes we paste that into a manual. I generally use
Universal Document Converter to print it to a jpeg or gif, but the
line work is mediocre.

For now, I don't mind interleaving hard copy from Open Office
and Eagle. It'd be nice to be able to pull .pdf or .ps into Open
Office, though.

--Winston
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
Don said:
Hi Winston,



Can you export HPGL? Or DXF? Many programs can import that, nicely.

No, those options aren't available, sadly.

--Winston
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
George said:
Hi Winston, what version of Visio? (I thought I was running the
oldest one left on the planet, version 3.0 '91-'94 Shapeware Corp.)

You win! I'm at 5.0a
There are multiple pages in visio, and I like the way it resizes
objects. You can open a little dialogue window and resize things in
different ways.

If it just would handle curve changes/movements properly and had
decent offpage connectors, I'd look at it further.
I thought it was miraculous when I first used it.

Not 'Visicalc' levels of miraculous but still pretty cool.
Eagle is nice too, just be careful when you generate a board from your
file :^)

Tell me more!
I've made a couple Eagle boards without issues.
I need to know if my service bureau was correcting
a problem without letting me know what was wrong.

--Winston
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
Update:

I tried a few other combinations unsuccessfully.

One thing that did work really well was Acrobat to .tif.
Open Office opened the .tif file properly.

It looks quite nice even at 2x zoom.

--Winston
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
John said:
Do you have a way to export good line work into a separate document?

From Eagle I use PNG most of the time because it generates a very small
file size. A schematic (or any other sketch for that matter) looks
pristine after import into a Word document. Just like in a magazine, and
can be sized up and down as needed. Usually I turn colors off because
most clients don't use color printers.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Winston said:
George Herold wrote:
[...]
Eagle is nice too, just be careful when you generate a board from your
file :^)

Tell me more!
I've made a couple Eagle boards without issues.
I need to know if my service bureau was correcting
a problem without letting me know what was wrong.

The PCB shop? That would be highly unusual although one of the big
places has once taken the liberty to "improve" my design. BIG mistake.
They ate the cost of another super-fast run because of this.

Usually if they need to change something they put your project on CAM
hold and notify you for correction or approval of their fixes.
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
Winston said:
George Herold wrote:
[...]
Eagle is nice too, just be careful when you generate a board from your
file :^)

Tell me more!
I've made a couple Eagle boards without issues.
I need to know if my service bureau was correcting
a problem without letting me know what was wrong.

The PCB shop? That would be highly unusual although one of the big
places has once taken the liberty to "improve" my design. BIG mistake.
They ate the cost of another super-fast run because of this.

Usually if they need to change something they put your project on CAM
hold and notify you for correction or approval of their fixes.

That's comforting.
I've been really pleased with the results from my vendors
via any package I've used from Traxedit to Autotrax to
Eagle.. (I know I missed a few.) I haven't had a problem.

Hey George, what should I be looking, for when sending my
Eagle boards out for fab?

--Winston
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Winston said:
Joerg said:
Winston said:
George Herold wrote:
[...]

Eagle is nice too, just be careful when you generate a board from your
file :^)

Tell me more!
I've made a couple Eagle boards without issues.
I need to know if my service bureau was correcting
a problem without letting me know what was wrong.

The PCB shop? That would be highly unusual although one of the big
places has once taken the liberty to "improve" my design. BIG mistake.
They ate the cost of another super-fast run because of this.

Usually if they need to change something they put your project on CAM
hold and notify you for correction or approval of their fixes.

That's comforting.
I've been really pleased with the results from my vendors
via any package I've used from Traxedit to Autotrax to
Eagle.. (I know I missed a few.) I haven't had a problem.

Hey George, what should I be looking, for when sending my
Eagle boards out for fab?

Make sure the Gerbers show up clean in a Gerber viewer. I use GC
PreView. But only to check other people's layouts because I always farm
them out.

Then there's the usual <expletive deleted> RoHS <four-letter word
censored>. They often wanted to dock my clients an extra $500 or so for
non-RoHS finish but so far I was always able to negotiate that away for
them.
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
George Herold wrote:

(...)
Oh, sorry, it was a joke, you wouldn't make a pcb from your
programming flow chart.

DoH!

I should have gotten that one because I
was musing what the PCB would look like
given all the bogus Packages I generated
to create my Symbols!

:)

--Winston
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
Winston wrote:

Make sure the Gerbers show up clean in a Gerber viewer. I use GC
PreView.

Doesn't everyone?
But only to check other people's layouts because I always farm
them out.

Then there's the usual<expletive deleted> RoHS<four-letter word
censored>. They often wanted to dock my clients an extra $500 or so for
non-RoHS finish but so far I was always able to negotiate that away for
them.

Holy Cow.

--Winston
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
George Herold wrote:

(...)
Geesh now I feel bad .... Eagle is just fine.
It's what I use.

George H.

'S Okay, George.

Don't feel bad. Just type slower, OK?

--Winston
 
J

Jasen Betts

Jan 1, 1970
0
For now, I don't mind interleaving hard copy from Open Office
and Eagle. It'd be nice to be able to pull .pdf or .ps into Open
Office, though.

Open with inkscape save as eps (or do same thing on the command-line
with ghostscript pdf2ps / ps2eps)
 
W

Winston

Jan 1, 1970
0
Jasen said:
Open with inkscape save as eps (or do same thing on the command-line
with ghostscript pdf2ps / ps2eps)

I'm using Open Office Writer and it won't open an .eps properly.

Luckily, Eagle will (Export Image) (.png or .tif or .bmp) and I
can do an Insert > Picture in Open Office Write, so I'm set.

Eagle > .png > Open Office Writer

I see that if I (Export Image) and check the 'Monochrome' box, the flowcharts
lose the yellow background and the resulting image file is smaller.

This'll work!

--Winston
 
J

Jasen Betts

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm using Open Office Writer and it won't open an .eps properly.

works fine here (ver 3.2.1)
Luckily, Eagle will (Export Image) (.png or .tif or .bmp) and I
can do an Insert > Picture in Open Office Write, so I'm set.

Eagle > .png > Open Office Writer

PNGs tend to looks dodgy on paper unless you use 600dpi or more
and when you do that it results in big files, and the corresponding
slowness.
 
Top