Tag Archives: eagle

Eagle Library

Since I’ve been doing so much work with Eagle lately I decided it was time to standardize my library. Like all good engineers, I’ve already spent too much time thinking about how I can standardize, how to optimize the generation of parts in it, etc. Well, I’ve at least got something going. If you’re interested in utilizing it, you can fork the repo over at GitHub.

Like I said, it’s pretty early in development. I’ve got a library for resistors and capacitors and that’s it. I’m working on throwing together a guidelines document so that I can keep all of the parts standardized – font size and ratio, line sizes, grids, etc. The goal is to organize all of the parts I use on a regular basis so that my footprints are consistent and “tried-and-true”. My goal is to utilize the IPC standard in the “References” directory whenever possible for a device footprint. If not in the IPC standard, then it should be based on the manufacturers suggested footprint, possibly the combination of multiple manufactures or another reference, such as the Sparkfun Libraries. Speaking of the Sparkfun libraries, why not use those? Basically the same idea? In fact it looks like you’re organizing yours in the same way they are.

Well you’d be right – I’m using the SF libraries as a guideline for my own. However, I plan on integrating more device data for my parts so that I can take advantage of the BOM ULP in Eagle. For example, I’m also trying to standardize my the parts I use on a regular basis – mostly passives like resistors and caps – so I’ve decided to use the ERJ thin-film resistors from Panasonic. The next time I place a Digikey order I’ll just order about 250-1000 of whatever resistor it is I’m ordering and call it done. To that end, I’ve created a generic resistor for this called “10k-?-*” where ? is the “variant” (package size for the resistors) and * is the “technology” (1% or 5% for the resistors). Then, I add in the 4 common package sizes I’ll be using – 0603, 0805, 1206 and 1210. So, each time I add a resistor to the library (and this is where I’m looking in to scripting the process) I’ll look up and add the 8 parts necessary.

There’s a long ways to go before I’ve got this all put together so expect to see a lot of changes over the next month or two. I’ll be adding the devices I used for ThumperFI to the appropriate libraries.