eagle import? is it possible?

[stressed_user]

Hi,

I have a new customer who made his designs in Eagle (an official version which he bought).

He's now asking us to make a new version of an existing product which was made in Eagle.

Is there a way to import schematics and/or layout in Ultiboard/ Mulisim?

The design is not that large, but had some complex layout-problems in the prototypes...

I'd like to avoid this bij importing or copying the existing data...

Anyone got any experience with this?

thanks

Message Edited by stressed user on 06-23-2008 03:50 AM

[Tien_P]

Hi,

Multisim and Ultiboard do not open Eagle files.   Te best you can do is get the PCB design in dxf format and use it to import into Ultiboard mechanical layer, now, you can use these layers as a guide to duplicate the component and trace placement.  At the end of the day, you are going to have to redo the entire design.

[RnDMonkey]

Any plans to incorporate the ability to import EAGLE files in the future?

[david_c_partridge]

What other package's file formats do you import?  Maybe Eagle can export into one of those formats and then import from that?

Dave

[stressed_user]

Until now, I only tried to import old Ultiboard and Ulticap designs, (V5) but not very succesfull. Shapes and symbols just aren't right...  I also had a customer with protel files, in UB9 there was a possibility to open these layouts, but it didn't work in my computer.  EWB/NI helped me out that time, they could do it with the same version as mine... I simply couldn't... What can Eagle export?

What about importing gerbers? Is there a way to import those layer by layer and copying? Has anyone done this before?

Some time ago I had to redesign an existing product, we only had a pdf of the layout, I converted it to bitmap, then entered the bitmpa into a mechanical layer. That worked well, but Ultiboard became incredibly slow when this layer was on.... Since version 10, Ultiboard tends to open all layers eacht time you open and close a ewprj file... also when you import a netlist, it turns on the 'force vectors' ...

[lacy]

I do not know about doing this on a layer by layer basis, but if you can export a DXF file from your package then you should be able to import that into Ultiboard. This will, as you say, go into the Mechanical Layer, but it may not slow it down as a bitmap did in your case.

I have done this from a free Gerber viewer before called GC Preview and it seemed to work O.K. I do not know how this can applied to what you need, but I thought I would pass it along and let you decide if you can use it. I do not believe there is any provision for importing Gerbers back into Ultiboard that I know of.

Hopefully something in this post was useful.

[stressed_user]

GOT  IT !

I found a way to import the original gerbers into Ultiboard... I also have GC Prevue on the computer, but the free version, which doesn't export in DXF...

So I found a program called ExcelCAM, this opens gerbers and exports them to DXF.

Just export the gerber layers one by one and import them into the layers, works fine. Just be carefull with the values, my first PCB was only 3mm wide, while it had to be 3 inches wide... :-). I imported a layer in copper top, and I can select any trace on the layer... I still will have to find a way to put components right, and remove the copper islands... but that seems not that hard...

Thanks a lot for the help

[kittmaster]

That works on the gerber level, but all layer intelligence is lost in this process. There is no way to rebuild a schematic from this method. I've never seen DXF export layer information like refdes, value or text data....but if it does....that is one heck of a workaround....;)

[RnDMonkey]

Yes, as Chris mentioned, you are really just exporting dimensions when you make gerbers. Much like a PDF of an image-scanned book is not the same as a document exported directly to PDF, you lose all the information that is not needed for the physical construction of the board, mainly all your components. It would be simpler if NI added support for EAGLE, considering EAGLE is a fairly widely-used program.