Page 237 - Make Your Own PCBs with EAGLE from Schematic Designs to Finished Boards

CHAPTER 11

Creating Libraries and Parts

E xperienced EAGLE users often find it useful to start building their own library of

components that they use frequently. This chapter shows you how to do this and how to copy
and modify components from other libraries.

It is easier to copy and modify an existing component than to create a new one entirely from
scratch, so we will develop an example where we modify the pad positioning of a part.

Creating a Library

Parts libraries are each held as a single file with the extension .lbr in the lbr folder within the

EAGLE installation directory. New libraries can be added simply by copying .lbr files into this
directory. In fact, we did this back in Chapter 1 when we installed the Adafruit and Sparkfun
libraries. Component manufacturers and suppliers often have their own libraries of components.
Another similar library is available from Seeedstudio (www.seeedstudio.com).

However, in this case, you are going to create your own library from scratch. We will give it a
general name, and if you do this, you probably will find it to be a useful place to keep modified or
new parts that you create.
To create a new library, open the Control Panel window of EAGLE, and then from the File menu,

select the option to create a new library (Figure 11-1).