We made our schematic and board layout in Autodesk Eagle for our marquee letter assignment this week. Our phrase is "error compiling" (LOL) and I got the letter O.
Here's my schematic I completed in class:
The commands I used the most were:
- Add parts
- Move
- Rotate
- Net (to make the green connections)
- Delete
- Text (to add the green text)
- Name (to edit component labels)
- Value (to add/edit component values)
They are outlined in the Eagle Schematic Design - 1 by Andy.
And here's the corresponding board I laid out:
Most common commands I used:
- Rotate
- Move
- Route (space bar for Via to route the other side)
- Tools → Element array placement (to arrange LEDs in a circle)
These are outlined in Eagle Board Design - 1 by Andy.
When I first went to layout the part, the components and yellow "air-wires" were a tangled mess. I spend 30 minutes trying to untangle them before giving up. What I learned was to lay out the components in sub-groups, making sure no air wires cross before moving on to the next sub-group.
I went back into the Schematic view and detached all the resistor-LED combos so that I could concentrate on just laying out the center components first in the board view. Once I had those neatly arranged, I went back to the Schematic view to connect the resistor-LED combos back in, then used the Element array placement function to place them all in a circle. That also took a bit of finagling but I was eventually able to rearrange it into a decent looking O shape.
Once I had all the yellow air wires laid out without any crossing, the routing was thankfully very straightforward.
I haven't designed the plate shape yet though...