infiniteneslives wrote:
Occasionally I still have to fire up Eagle to reference something and immediately want to shoot myself. Seriously why are do you have 100 some layers for a 2 layer PCB. Copper, silk, documentation, outline, and maybe mask, that's all you're generating, that's all I need! Why can't I easily change the line size of this silk screen? Why can't I just select the damn thing on the screen and move/delete/whatever it by clicking on it! Everything is so unbelievably unintuitive it's maddening.
This sounds very much like the discussion about Photoshop vs alternatives discussion above. Yes, those extra features may seem redundant if you never use them. The reason for all those layers is organization and semantics.
What if all the values for your resistors are cluttering your screen and you just want to see the names? Turn off the values. Or vice versa.
What if you want to see only your drills and outline so you can take a screenshot and compare it to some other part? Disable everything except those two.
Want to stop yourself from accidentally moving a part on the top layer? Disable the tOrigins layer and the little crosshairs for moving a part disappears and likewise you can't move those parts. Sounds silly and can be extremely confusing the first time it happens, but useful.
Hell, don't like the airwires between unrouted copper? Disable'em. That's layer 19.
The stop, restrict and keepout layers are meant for automatic rule checking, but also have nice side effects in the gerber output. The stop layer can be used to do cutout in the solder mask (the lacquer layer that covers most of the PCB that is often green.) The restrict layer on the other hand makes a cutout in copper planes. If nothing else, this can be used for artistic effect, ie writing something in copper cutouts behind the solder mask.
It's a powerful tool, but also has a learning curve.
But I wonder, what exactly is it that you want to move freely? The point of having a component is that you get a footprint with a known layout. If you have a footprint for, say, a DB25 connector with 25 solder connections and two holes for attaching the connector with a screw on either side of the board, what do you expect to do exactly? If you can just move anything willy-nilly, it's extremely easy to shoot your self in the foot. Move the screw hole by accident and forget it about and voilĂ , the hole doesn't line up when you order the board. Move an individual solder land for a component, and now the component won't match. Move the solder mask stop rectangle for an individual pad, and now the cutout for that pad mismatches the solder land, so the component can't be soldered. it would be insanity to be in that edit mode all the time and have to walk on eggshells to not accidentally move something you don't want to. This is not Adobe Illustrator. If you DO want to edit the component layout, you can still do that right way, through the component library. And you also have the smash function which breaks loose specifically the name and value for a component, which you might actually reasonably want to move.
But if you don't need or want the extra functions, then maybe Eagle indeed isn't the tool for you. And indeed, I'm glad that you found something that works for you.