Page 15 - Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE from Schematic Designs to Finished Boards

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

I n this chapter, you will learn how to install EAGLE™ Light Edition and will discover the

various views and screens that make up an EAGLE project. EAGLE (Easily Applicable
Graphical Layout Editor) is a product of the German company Cadsoft. The company is now a

subsidiary of Premier Farnell, which also owns Newark Electronics in the United States and CPC in
the United Kingdom.
The software has been around for many years, and despite having a user interface that can seem a

little daunting to newcomers, it is a powerful and flexible product. It has become a standard for hobby
use primarily because of its freeware version and the large set of component libraries and general
adoption as the standard tool for open-source hardware (OSH) providers such as Sparkfun and
Adafruit. Generally, you will find EAGLE design files available for their OSH products as well as
for high-profile products such as the Arduino family of circuit boards.

Printed Circuit Boards

Because you are reading this book, you probably want to make a printed circuit board (PCB) and

already have a basic understanding of what exactly a PCB is and how it works. However, PCBs
come with their own set of jargon, and it is worth establishing exactly what we mean by vias, tracks,
pads, and layers.
The main focus of the book will be on making double-sided professional-quality circuit boards.
This book assumes that you will design circuit boards and then e-mail the design files to a low-cost

PCB fabrication service (as low as US$10 for 10 boards) that will actually make the boards. The
making of PCBs at home is now largely redundant because they can generally be made at lower cost
and to a better standard than home PCB etching, with all its attendant problems of handling and
disposing of toxic chemicals or the need for expensive milling machines.

Figure 1-1 shows the anatomy of a two-layer PCB. You will see exactly how this PCB was
designed later in this book, where it is used as an example. For now, let’s briefly explain the anatomy
of a PCB. Referring to Figure 1-1, we have the following: