EAGLE (program) - Eagle Software

EAGLE is a scriptable electronic design automation application with schematic capture, printed circuit board layout, auto-router and computer-aided manufacturing features. EAGLE stands for Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor (German: Einfach Anzuwendender Grafischer Layout-Editor) and is developed by CadSoft Computer GmbH. Cadsoft Computer GmbH was acquired by Autodesk Inc. in 2016.

Popular DIY electronics site SparkFun uses EAGLE, and releases the EAGLE files for boards designed in-house. Other notable users include Adafruit, Arduino and Dangerous Prototypes.

Features

EAGLE contains a schematic editor, for designing circuit diagrams. Parts can be placed on many sheets and connected together through ports.

The PCB layout editor allows back annotation to the schematic and auto-routing to automatically connect traces based on the connections defined in the schematic.

EAGLE saves Gerber and PostScript layout files and Excellon and Sieb & Meyer drill files. These standard files are accepted by many PCB fabrication companies.

Community support

A large group of textual and video tutorials exists for beginners to design their own PCBs.

SparkFun Electronics is a company that has grown due to the hobbyist market exemplified by Make magazine and others. Many of these companies offer EAGLE part libraries which define schematic shapes, pinouts, and part sizes to allow for correct layout in the PCB layout editor. Other popular libraries include Adafruit, SnapEDA, and Dangerous prototypes, element14 (a subsidiary of Farnell, former owners of CadSoft) also have some libraries available from their site.

History

EAGLE was developed in 1988 as a 16-bit application for Microsoft DOS, with support for OS/2 and Windows added later on. Starting with version 4.0, EAGLE was converted to 32-bit. EAGLE version 4.0 also dropped support for DOS and OS/2, but was among the first professional electronic CAD tools available for Linux. A 32-bit DPMI version of EAGLE 4.0 running under DOS was available on special request in order to help support existing customers, but was not released commercially.

Starting with version 4.13, EAGLE became available for Mac OS X, with versions before 5.0.0 still requiring X11. Version 5.0.0 officially dropped support for Windows 9x and Windows NT 3.x/4.x. EAGLE 6.0.0 no longer supports Mac OS X on the Power PC platform (only on Intel Macs), and the minimum requirements have been changed to Mac OS X 10.6, Linux 2.6 and Windows XP.

On 24 September 2009, Premier Farnell announced the acquisition of CadSoft Computer GmbH, developer of EAGLE.

On 27 June 2016, Autodesk announced the acquisition of CadSoft Computer GmbH from Premier Farnell, with Premier Farnell continuing to distribute Cadsoft products for Autodesk.

Available versions

As of EAGLE version 8.0, there are Premium, Standard, free, and student & educator editions, with the Standard and Premium sold on a monthly or annual subscription basis.

Comparison of features for the various available editions: