19 Dec 11

Everone's favourite quite-usable-without-paying-squillions PCB creation software, EAGLE, has released version 6.

Who ever thought things like meandering would be considered a good feature to have? In PCB software, it's a pretty important thing if you want multiple connections to be exactly the same length for impedance matching and timing reasons - like connecting a microcontroller and external RAM.  As well, you can now export your files in XML format, add dimensions much more easily, cut / paste into new files while maintaining consistency (finally!), better undo and a host of other features. You can check out the new improvements on the EAGLE website.

We also notice that Farnell / Newark (who now own Cadsoft) are putting out library files with a lot more of their parts now, which makes a huge difference when you're designing.  Creating new parts sure does drag down your productivity, so even something that gets you going will save a lot of time.