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General => Open Discussion => Topic started by: culturejam on June 07, 2023, 05:09:37 PM

Title: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: culturejam on June 07, 2023, 05:09:37 PM
Email from AutoDesk just now says so. And here's the blog post from AutoDesk:
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/future-of-autodesk-eagle-fusion-360-electronics/?mktvar002=5825936009%7CEML%7C172392069
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: madbean on June 07, 2023, 06:13:38 PM
Yeah, this is what Autodesk does. Buys em up then eventually kills the software. They did the same thing with my favorite 3D program, Softimage.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jimilee on June 07, 2023, 06:38:36 PM
Well what are we supposed to do? They gettin out of the CAD business?


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Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jessenator on June 07, 2023, 06:57:52 PM
I wonder if folks using KiCAD over yhe freemiun Eagle is getting to them.

Also there's one other program above Eagle (don't recall the name) that has a five figure (top end) license fee, which is amazing, but maybe it's just that far ahead that Autodesk wants to cut its losses?

KiCAD doesn't seem like the worst GPL program ever written, but it didn't seem intuitive during my brief foray. tried it once, but just stuck with Eagle. Maybe it's time to "find" an offline version of Eagle and stick with that.

Or we do the legal thing and move to KiCAD  : P

Whatever we move to, it'll have to be Windows 11 compliant, because win10 goes EOL in 2025
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: culturejam on June 07, 2023, 07:02:31 PM
Quote from: jessenator on June 07, 2023, 06:57:52 PM
Also there's one other program above Eagle (don't recall the name) that has a five figure (top end) license fee, which is amazing, but maybe it's just that far ahead that Autodesk wants to cut its losses?

You might be talking about Altium. But I honestly don't think even Eagle's highest-priced option is in the same ballpark as Altium. Probably not the reason.

The likeliest reason is that they want you to migrate to Fusion360.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jimilee on June 07, 2023, 08:27:34 PM
Quote from: jessenator on June 07, 2023, 06:57:52 PM
I wonder if folks using KiCAD over yhe freemiun Eagle is getting to them.

Also there's one other program above Eagle (don't recall the name) that has a five figure (top end) license fee, which is amazing, but maybe it's just that far ahead that Autodesk wants to cut its losses?

KiCAD doesn't seem like the worst GPL program ever written, but it didn't seem intuitive during my brief foray. tried it once, but just stuck with Eagle. Maybe it's time to "find" an offline version of Eagle and stick with that.

Or we do the legal thing and move to KiCAD  : P

Whatever we move to, it'll have to be Windows 11 compliant, because win10 goes EOL in 2025
And Mac compatible.


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Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jubal81 on June 08, 2023, 12:01:49 AM
I'd been clinging to 7.3 Eagle for ages, but recently took up EasyEDA and couldn't be more impressed. It's very similar, but with features that make it so much easier to use. Also, it supports importing anything from Eagle, including projects and libraries.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: madbean on June 08, 2023, 12:09:20 AM
I'd love to go to Altium but I don't see it ever happening. I could pretty much use Eagle 7.5 for the next 10 years without issue. Jeez, I'm even sick of paying for the Adobe Master Suite. I've probably put over $6k into it and I still don't own the goddam software!
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jessenator on June 08, 2023, 01:44:07 AM
I have a perma-offline workstation with a pre CC version. I refuse to sub unless work provides it. Yeah, newer versions have features I miss in the old, but it's bare minimum and that's what I need.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: gordo on June 08, 2023, 01:52:59 AM
I gotta check out EasyEDA.  I've install DIPTrace and KiCAD and struggled with both.  Although to be fair I approached it like I'd be a wizard in a few sessions.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jimilee on June 08, 2023, 02:32:56 AM
Quote from: jessenator on June 08, 2023, 01:44:07 AM
I have a perma-offline workstation with a pre CC version. I refuse to sub unless work provides it. Yeah, newer versions have features I miss in the old, but it's bare minimum and that's what I need.
Same here. I use it all the time.


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Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jimilee on June 08, 2023, 02:33:27 AM
Quote from: madbean on June 08, 2023, 12:09:20 AM
I'd love to go to Altium but I don't see it ever happening. I could pretty much use Eagle 7.5 for the next 10 years without issue. Jeez, I'm even sick of paying for the Adobe Master Suite. I've probably put over $6k into it and I still don't own the goddam software!
Is 7.5 an offline version


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Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jimilee on June 08, 2023, 02:34:59 AM
Quote from: gordo on June 08, 2023, 01:52:59 AM
I gotta check out EasyEDA.  I've install DIPTrace and KiCAD and struggled with both.  Although to be fair I approached it like I'd be a wizard in a few sessions.
I started with easy EDA because it was really intuitive and I could work on stuff while I was at work without having to install software. I switched to eagle because it was used a lot here.


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Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: vattern on June 08, 2023, 09:51:13 AM
I changed from Eagle to KiCad a while ago, and found that once I got used to the way things are done in KiCad I became just as unproductive in KiCad as I had been in Eagle.
The biggest mind shift was that packages are separate from symbols. So part of the round trip is to assign what package I want for the symbol ( a lot of the newer ones have a default package selected now ).
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: derevaun on June 08, 2023, 08:42:24 PM
Weird, I had just sat down to learn Diptrace a couple days ago and decided I need a good reason first. But it's really the second shoe dropping after Autodesk bought it. I steer my students away from their stuff because it's an unwise investment of time and learning, except for AutoCAD I guess.

It will be interesting to see how Adafruit and Sparkfun react to the news. Their communities, along with especially this one, were the main reasons I bothered to learn Eagle. As long as 7.x continues to work, I'm good, but it seems like EasyEDA is worth exploring rather than learn another byzantine library management system for KiCAD or Diptrace. Looking at EasyEDA's feature list, the free version doesn't have DRC?

Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jessenator on June 08, 2023, 08:58:19 PM
Quote from: culturejam on June 07, 2023, 07:02:31 PM
You might be talking about Altium. But I honestly don't think even Eagle's highest-priced option is in the same ballpark as Altium. Probably not the reason.
That's the one.

Quote from: culturejam on June 07, 2023, 07:02:31 PM
The likeliest reason is that they want you to migrate to Fusion360.
heh, I didn't even know about Fusion360. Haven't looked too deeply, but it sounds like a take on Adobe's CC software as a [rental] service
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jwin615 on June 08, 2023, 09:34:13 PM
Quote from: derevaun on June 08, 2023, 08:42:24 PM
Weird, I had just sat down to learn Diptrace a couple days ago and decided I need a good reason first. But it's really the second shoe dropping after Autodesk bought it. I steer my students away from their stuff because it's an unwise investment of time and learning, except for AutoCAD I guess.

It will be interesting to see how Adafruit and Sparkfun react to the news. Their communities, along with especially this one, were the main reasons I bothered to learn Eagle. As long as 7.x continues to work, I'm good, but it seems like EasyEDA is worth exploring rather than learn another byzantine library management system for KiCAD or Diptrace. Looking at EasyEDA's feature list, the free version doesn't have DRC?
My biggest worry with easyeda, aside from how much Chinese gov money is likely behind it, is if it goes to a sub or "+/max" model. I have no reason to think that it would as it seems deved to get you to use their partner services but, who knows what their agreement terms are with them? Once the agreement/contract is up that likely gives jlpcb exclusivity, what's next? Monthly sub? I could see the possibility.
At least with kicad, I know it will always be free and open and it, along with the plugins, continue to develop and a nice pace. Additionally, I can only see that getting better as more.migrate from eagle.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: gordo on June 09, 2023, 09:35:10 PM
I think I mostly just need to get my butt back in the ring and start working on stuff again.  I redid the layout on my old BlueDog and it failed and was never able to troubleshoot why.  Kinda took the wind out of my sails for a bit especially since I knew I was probably looking right at the problem.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jimilee on June 10, 2023, 12:27:42 AM
Quote from: gordo on June 09, 2023, 09:35:10 PM
I think I mostly just need to get my butt back in the ring and start working on stuff again.  I redid the layout on my old BlueDog and it failed and was never able to troubleshoot why.  Kinda took the wind out of my sails for a bit especially since I knew I was probably looking right at the problem.
I concur.


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Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: pickdropper on June 10, 2023, 01:29:52 AM
Quote from: madbean on June 08, 2023, 12:09:20 AM
I'd love to go to Altium but I don't see it ever happening. I could pretty much use Eagle 7.5 for the next 10 years without issue. Jeez, I'm even sick of paying for the Adobe Master Suite. I've probably put over $6k into it and I still don't own the goddam software!

Altium is wonderful, but extremely expensive.

It's easily the most configurable PCB layout program I've used and really easy to break via settings, or at least it was when I used it last.  But if you are good at writing code (I'm not), you can do an awful lot with it.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: Haberdasher on June 24, 2023, 02:41:44 PM
I've been on Diptrace for years now and never going back to Eagle anyway. If I had to stop using DT for some reason I'd maybe look into KiCad. Haven't tried EasyEDA.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: vattern on June 26, 2023, 08:28:41 AM
For those wanting to give KiCad a go, it also has an "Import Eagle" option. Not tried it in anger, but from what I remember it pulled in the board OK.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: aion on June 26, 2023, 04:18:28 PM
Quote from: jimilee on June 08, 2023, 02:33:27 AM
Quote from: madbean on June 08, 2023, 12:09:20 AM
I'd love to go to Altium but I don't see it ever happening. I could pretty much use Eagle 7.5 for the next 10 years without issue. Jeez, I'm even sick of paying for the Adobe Master Suite. I've probably put over $6k into it and I still don't own the goddam software!
Is 7.5 an offline version

Yeah, everything up to 7.7 is offline/lifetime, although Autodesk has been trying to discourage new installations lately, saying stuff like "your perpetual license will continue to function forever on your current machine" (e.g. in the FAQ here (https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Autodesk-EAGLE-Announcement-Next-steps-and-FAQ.html)) which is the Platonic ideal of corporate doublespeak. From what I've read, I believe as long as you keep the .key file and you have the download code and installation code from a previous installation, you can still activate on a new machine - all they've done is discontinue the delivery of key files for existing accounts trying to install it someplace new if you don't have them saved (ref. this forum post (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/eagle/eagle-license-for-7-7-0/msg4476391/?PHPSESSID=vev64146ohgghn8370a68e4bfe#msg4476391)).
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jimilee on June 26, 2023, 04:19:27 PM
Ah, ok. That makes me feel better. Thank you sir.


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Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: jessenator on July 01, 2023, 11:09:34 PM
I'm guessing the answer is "no," but figured I'd ask anyway:

Is it still possible to purchase a perpetual license for v7.2? That's the last rev that runs on OS X Lion (10.7) which is my stationary ol' reliable.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: nzCdog on September 12, 2023, 04:02:30 AM
(dredge...ooops :-[ )

End of an era! Havent had life-bandwidth for hobbying, but recently dug up an abandoned project to complete.
Does anyone have one of the older free 7.x version installer (Win) of Eagle CAD I could pilfer?  Tried the new autodesk versions and installs but wont run on my Win11 machine. 

Also, hi!  Long time ;D
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: madbean on September 12, 2023, 03:04:41 PM
Quote from: nzCdog on September 12, 2023, 04:02:30 AM
(dredge...ooops :-[ )

End of an era! Havent had life-bandwidth for hobbying, but recently dug up an abandoned project to complete.
Does anyone have one of the older free 7.x version installer (Win) of Eagle CAD I could pilfer?  Tried the new autodesk versions and installs but wont run on my Win11 machine. 

Also, hi!  Long time ;D

I'm sure that I do. I'll look.
Title: Re: Eagle CAD - End of Life in 2026
Post by: nzCdog on September 12, 2023, 10:53:26 PM
thanks Brian :D