Monk - Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE: From Schematic Designs to Finished Boards

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To Stephen, from a very proud Dad.

Dr. Simon Monk (Preston, UK) has a degree in cybernetics and computer science and a Ph.D. in software engineering. He spent several years as an academic before he returned to industry, co-founding the mobile software company Momote Ltd. He has been an active electronics hobbyist since his early teens and is a full-time writer on hobby electronics and open-source hardware. Dr. Monk is the author of numerous electronics books, specializing in open-source hardware platforms, especially Arduino and Raspberry Pi. He is also co-author with Paul Scherz of Practical Electronics for Inventors, Third Edition.

You can follow him on Twitter, where he is @simonmonk2.

M any thanks to all those at McGraw-Hill who have done such a great job in producing this book. In particular, thanks to my editor Roger Stewart and to Patty Wallenburg.

I am most grateful to Mike Basset for his technical review of the material.

And, last but not least, thanks once again to Linda, for her patience and generosity in giving me space to do this.

Introduction

I n this chapter, you will learn how to install EAGLE Light Edition and will discover the various views and screens that make up an EAGLE project. EAGLE (Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor) is a product of the German company Cadsoft. The company is now a subsidiary of Premier Farnell, which also owns Newark Electronics in the United States and CPC in the United Kingdom.

The software has been around for many years, and despite having a user interface that can seem a little daunting to newcomers, it is a powerful and flexible product. It has become a standard for hobby use primarily because of its freeware version and the large set of component libraries and general adoption as the standard tool for open-source hardware (OSH) providers such as Sparkfun and Adafruit. Generally, you will find EAGLE design files available for their OSH products as well as for high-profile products such as the Arduino family of circuit boards.

Because you are reading this book, you probably want to make a printed circuit board (PCB) and already have a basic understanding of what exactly a PCB is and how it works. However, PCBs come with their own set of jargon, and it is worth establishing exactly what we mean by vias, tracks, pads, and layers.

The main focus of the book will be on making double-sided professional-quality circuit boards. This book assumes that you will design circuit boards and then e-mail the design files to a low-cost PCB fabrication service (as low as US$10 for 10 boards) that will actually make the boards. The making of PCBs at home is now largely redundant because they can generally be made at lower cost and to a better standard than home PCB etching, with all its attendant problems of handling and disposing of toxic chemicals or the need for expensive milling machines.