Synopses & Reviews
"Matt Scarpino has provided a great tool for the hobbyist starting out in the circuit board design world, demonstrating all the features you’ll need to create your own circuit board projects. However, the experienced engineer will also benefit from the book, as it serves as a complete reference guide to all EAGLE software configuration settings and features. His insightful guidance helps simplify difficult tasks, and his handy tips will help save you hours of trial-and-error experimentation."
--Rich Blum, author, Sams Teach Yourself Arduino Programming in 24 Hours and Sams Teach Yourself Python Programming for Raspberry Pi in 24 Hours
Powerful, flexible, and inexpensive, EAGLE is the ideal PCB design solution for every Maker/DIYer, startup, hobbyist, or student. Today, all open source Arduino designs are released in EAGLE format: If you want to design cost-effective new PCBs, this is the tool to learn.
Matthew Scarpino helps you take full advantage of EAGLE’s remarkable capabilities. You won’t find any differential equations here: only basic circuit theory and hands-on techniques for designing effective PCBs and getting innovative new gadgets to market.
Scarpino starts with an accessible introduction to the fundamentals of PCB design. Next, he walks through the design of basic, intermediate, and complex circuit boards, starting with a simple inverting amplifier and culminating in a six-layer single-board computer with hundreds of components and thousands of routed connections.
As the circuits grow more complex, you’ll master advanced EAGLE features and discover how to automate crucial design-related tasks. Whatever your previous experience, Scarpino’s start-to-finish examples and practical insight can help you create designs of stunning power and efficiency.
- Understand single-sided, double-sided, and multilayer boards
- Design practical circuits with the schematic editor
- Transform schematics into physical board designs
- Convert board designs into Gerber output files for fabrication
- Expand EAGLE’s capabilities with new libraries and components
- Exchange designs with LTspice and simulate their responses to input
- Automate simple repetitive operations with editor commands
- Streamline circuit design and library generation with User Language programs (ULPs)
- Design for the advanced BeagleBone Black, with high-speed BGA devices and a 32-bit system on a chip (SoC)
- Use buses to draw complex connections between components
- Configure stackups, create/route BGA components, and route high-speed signals
eagle-book.com provides an archive containing the design files for the book’s circuits. It also includes EAGLE libraries, scripts, and User Language programs (ULPs).
Review
"Matt Scarpino has succeeded where scores of others have failed--he’s managed to make the formidable EAGLE software understandable and, more importantly, useable. His presentation is not only approachable and logical, but it’s complete. When you’ve finished his book, you’ll be able to do something meaningful with EAGLE. This book belongs on every engineer’s bookshelf or tablet."
--Bryan Bergeron, Editor, Nuts & Volts Magazine
"Matt Scarpino’s Designing Circuit Boards with EAGLE is a great resource for electronics enthusiasts who are ready to get serious and produce their own circuit boards. Matt’s sensible instructions take readers through the steps to design simple and not-so-simple circuit boards, and you can really tell that he’s been using EAGLE for 10 years and loves it. I’m recommending this book to all my maker friends."
--John Baichtal, Author of Arduino for Beginners: Essential Skills Every Maker Needs
"With the rising popularity of open source hardware projects, the EAGLE circuit board software has become a vital tool for both hobbyists and professional engineers alike. Designing Circuit Boards with EAGLE provides all the information you’ll need to get up to speed with the EAGLE software, and to start creating your own circuit board designs. Matt Scarpino has provided a great tool for the hobbyist starting out in the circuit board design world, demonstrating all of the features you’ll need to know to create your own circuit board projects. However, the experienced engineer will also benefit from the book, as it also serves as a complete reference guide to all the EAGLE software configuration settings and features. His insightful guidance helps simplify difficult tasks in the EAGLE software, and his handy tips will help save you hours of trial-and-error experimenting in your circuit board designs."
--Rich Blum, Author of Sam’s Teach Yourself Arduino Programming in 24 Hours and Sams Teach Yourself Python Programming for Raspberry Pi in 24 Hours
Synopsis
Powerful, flexible, and inexpensive, EAGLE has established itself as the ideal PCB design solution for wide audiences of startups, Maker/DIY aficionados, electronic hobbyists, and engineering students. However, the core EAGLE reference documentation is difficult to understand, doesn't teach well, and relies on trivial examples that don't reflect real-world challenges. In Designing Circuit Boards with EAGLE , experienced circuit board designer Matthew Scarpino fills that gap, illuminating all the essentials of electronic circuit design with EAGLE.
Scarpino begins with an exceptionally accessible beginner's introduction to the fundamentals of PCB design. Next, he walks you through designing simple, intermediate, and complex circuit boards, and submitting Gerber files to fabrication facilities for manufacturing. You'll even learn how to automate your design process with ULP-based scripts and user programs. Building from Scarpino's extensive sample code, you can bring stunning power and efficiency to virtually any circuit board design project.
Synopsis
The Maker Movement is huge and grows larger every day. Many individuals and small businesses would like to design their own circuits, but many professional design tools are prohibitively expensive. EAGLE, the Easily Applicable Graphical Layout Editor, by Cadsoft provides a complete set of features for designing circuit boards at a price that makes it accessible to students, individuals, and small-to-medium businesses.
The goal of this book is to ease the process of learning EAGLE. The book walks through the process of designing circuits, starting with a simple circuit (a noninverting amplifier), proceeding to an intermediate circuit (the Arduino Femtoduino--the Arduino circuit boards are very popular among hobbyists and entrepreneurs, and to allow others to construct similar boards, the Arduino developers release their designs in the EAGLE format), and finally reaching an advanced circuit (the BeagleBone Black). During the course of the presentation, it describes both the EAGLE interface and the general process of designing circuit boards.
In addition to point-and-click design, a significant portion of this book is devoted to automation. EAGLE has a rich command language that can be accessed through scripts and User Language programs, or ULPs.
This book also includes a great deal of material to help readers understand the fundamentals of circuit boards and the theory behind the example circuits.
Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the topics of EAGLE and circuit board design. The primary purpose of these chapters is to familiarize the reader with both topics and present the terminology that will be used throughout the book.
Chapters 3 through 7 provide a tutorial-based presentation of designing circuit boards with EAGLE. Chapter 3 breezes through the entire design process for a trivially simple circuit. In contrast, Chapters 4 through 7 present more detail as they walk through the design of the Femtoduino circuit.
Chapters 8 through 13 discuss an assortment of topics related to EAGLE circuit design. These include circuit simulation, the process of creating custom components, and the all-important subject of design automation. Design automation is one of the most powerful aspects of EAGLE, but it's also one of the most overlooked.
Chapters 14 and 15 present the book's advanced example design: the BeagleBone Black. The name may be silly, but there's nothing silly about the circuit. It has six board layers, hundreds of components, and thousands upon thousands of routed connections. Also presented are EAGLE's advanced capabilities and ways to take advantage of design automation.
About the Author
Matthew Scarpino is an engineer with more than 12 years of experience designing hardware and software. He has a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering and is an Advanced Certified Interconnect Designer (CID+). He currently resides in Massachusetts where he develops software for embedded systems. In his spare time, he uses EAGLE to design accessories for his Android smartphone and the Google Glass.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiv
About the Author xv
Part I: Preliminary Introduction
Chapter 1: Introducing EAGLE 1
1.1 A Whirlwind Tour of EAGLE 2
1.2 Obtaining EAGLE 6
1.3 Licensing 7
1.4 Organization of This Book 8
1.5 More Information 10
1.6 Conclusion 11
Chapter 2: An Overview of Circuit Boards and EAGLE Design 13
2.1 Anatomy of a Printed Circuit Board 14
2.2 Overview of Circuit Design with EAGLE 22
2.3 Conclusion 28
Chapter 3: Designing a Simple Circuit 31
3.1 An Inverting Amplifier 31
3.2 Initial Steps 33
3.3 The Inverting Amplifier Schematic 35
3.4 Board Layout 44
3.5 Routing 48
3.6 CAM Processor 52
3.7 Conclusion 55
Part II: Designing the Arduino Femtoduino
Chapter 4: Designing the Femtoduino Schematic 57
4.1 Initial Steps 59
4.2 The Reset Switch 61
4.3 Voltage Regulation 65
4.4 The ATmega328P Microcontroller 67
4.5 Header Connections 71
4.6 Net Classes 73
4.7 Electrical Rule Check 74
4.8 Generating the Board Design 76
4.9 Framing the Schematic 76
4.10 Attributes and Assembly Variants 77
4.11 Conclusion 79
Chapter 5: Layout and Design Rules 81
5.1 Layers 81
5.2 Board Layout 84
5.3 Design Rule Check 90
5.4 Conclusion 100
Chapter 6: Routing 101
6.1 An Overview of Routing 102
6.2 Manual Routing 103
6.3 Follow-Me Routing 108
6.4 The Autorouter 109
6.5 Home PCB Fabrication 113
6.6 Conclusion 118
Chapter 7: Generating and Submitting Output Files 119
7.1 Jobs and the CAM Processor 119
7.2 Viewing Gerber Files 125
7.3 Drill Files 126
7.4 Submitting Design Files 130
7.5 Conclusion 140
Part III: Advanced Capabilities
Chapter 8: Creating Libraries and Components 141
8.1 Creating the Library 142
8.2 Creating the SIMPLE-TQFP16 143
8.3 Creating the VACUUM-TH 149
8.4 Creating the TW9920 153
8.5 Conclusion 160
Chapter 9: Simulating Circuits with LTspice 161
9.1 Introducing LTspice 161
9.2 Designing a Schematic 163
9.3 Simulating the Circuit 170
9.4 Exchanging Designs with EAGLE 174
9.5 Conclusion 176
Part IV: Automating EAGLE
Chapter 10: Editor Commands 177
10.1 Introducing Editor Commands 177
10.2 Schematic Editor Commands 180
10.3 Commands for Board Designs 187
10.4 Commands for Library Interface 192
10.5 The Assign, Change, and Set Commands 202
10.6 Configuration Scripts 207
10.7 Conclusion 208
Chapter 11: Introduction to the User Language (UL) 209
11.1 Overview of UL 209
11.2 Simple Data Types and Functions 211
11.3 Builtins 214
11.4 Control Structures 219
11.5 The exit Statement 221
11.6 Conclusion 222
Chapter 12: Examining Designs with the User Language 225
12.1 UL-Specific Data Types 226
12.2 Schematic Designs (UL_SCHEMATIC) 227
12.3 Board Designs (UL_BOARD) 243
12.4 Conclusion 256
Chapter 13: Creating Dialogs and Menu Items 257
13.1 Predefined Dialogs 257
13.2 Custom Dialogs and Widgets 264
13.3 Dialog Layouts 275
13.4 The Menu Command 278
13.5 Conclusion 279
Part V: The BeagleBone Black
Chapter 14: Schematic Design for the BeagleBone Black 281
14.1 Overview of the BeagleBone Black 282
14.2 Advanced EAGLE Schematics 284
14.3 AM3359 Memory/JTAG Connections 286
14.4 AM3359 I/O Connections 290
14.5 System Memory 293
14.6 Power Management 295
14.7 Ethernet and the Universal Serial Bus 297
14.8 Graphics Display 300
14.9 Conclusion 301
Chapter 15: Board Design for the BeagleBone Black 303
15.1 Configuring the Stackup 304
15.2 Creating and Routing Ball Grid Arrays 307
15.3 Trace Length and Meander 313
15.4 The BBB Board Design 316
15.5 Conclusion 321
Appendix A: EAGLE Library Files 323
A.1 Anatomy of a Library File 323
A.2 Settings, Grid, and Layers 325
A.3 Overview of Library Elements 327
A.4 Symbols 329
A.5 Packages 336
A.6 Devicesets 340
A.7 Conclusion 346
Appendix B: The Gerber File Format 347
B.1 Introducing the Gerber Format 347
B.2 Setting Global Properties 349
B.3 Aperture Definitions 353
B.4 Drawing Shapes 356
B.5 Custom Apertures 361
B.6 Conclusion 368
Index 369