Page 23 - Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE from Schematic Designs to Finished Boards

FIGURE 1-8 Stripboard layout.

The X’s underneath the IC are breaks in the track, which are made with a drill bit, and one of the
goals of a good stripboard layout is to try to avoid too many breaks having to be made in the track.
Breaks are unavoidable for an IC such as this. If we did not make them, pin 1 would be connected to
pin 8, pin 2 to pin 7, and so on, and nothing would work.

Installing EAGLE Light Edition

Having prototyped your design and being sure that it is time to start making PCBs, let’s get on with

installing and configuring EAGLE, the design software that we will use to create PCBs. One of the
great things about EAGLE is that it is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. Thus the
first step in installation is to go to www.cadsoftusa.com and click on the “Downloads” button. The
instructions are for Version 6.3 of EAGLE.

Select the download for your platform, and then follow the instructions in the section for your
operating system below.