BLOG > Tutorial 1 for CadSoft Eagle: Schematic Design

This tutorial was featured on the CadSoft website on 06/19/2012

In the course of making my Arduino Tutorial Series (don’t worry, I have more of those in the works), I got a ton of requests for a tutorial series on how to design circuit boards.  Now, I’m answering those requests with my Eagle Tutorial Series!  Supported by element14 & cadsoft, this series will take you through the process of designing a complete PCB using the very popular Eagle CAD software.  In this first tutorial on CadSoft Eagle, I’ll show you how to get the program up and running, how to navigate the interface, how to design your first schematic, and how to use DesignConnect to build a Bill-of-Materials.

This tutorial has been made possible with support from CadSoft and element14. Learn more about Cadsoft Eagle here: http://www.element14.com/cadsoft
You can download CadSoft Eagle here: http://www.cadsoftusa.com/
You can download the Adafruit Eagle Library that I used in this tutorial here: https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-Eagle-Library

You can download the files associated with this episode here: Eagle Tutorial 1 Files

Source materials for all my eagle tutorials can be found in my github repository.

GNU GPL License Distributed under the GNU General Public (Open-Source) License.
Please Attribute and Share-Alike.

Watch this tutorial at element14.com, or on youtube.  It’s embedded below:

86 comments

  1. Nice and useful. Though I’m a newbie in electronics and learning alone the basics and will need more time before I design a circuit of my own this gave me a good runthrough of the soft for future and provided a very useful information about why I was confused in reading schematics (inverted numerotation of some parts). Will be checking the next ones indeed. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.All the best. Victor.

  2. Great tutorial as always.. this series came at a good time as Ive been getting interested in etching / pcb fabbing. Any plan to cover this (maybe in the last tutorial)?

  3. Finally! A web tutorial about EagleCad! Can’t wait for the next tutorials!

    Thanks for all the great tutorials!

    Yannick M.

  4. I don’t know about the Windows version, but the Linux verslon allows me to rotate the part while moving it. After selecting the part so that it can be moved, right click it to rotate. This works both in the schematic, and the PCB layout.

  5. Got it! I will start with designing a front panel for a future MIDI controller leftover parts modules , rotaries&buttons. I wish to tell you about it but this is not the place for… As I have a 555 in the box I’ll rather apply for your tuition. Thanks.
    Victor

  6. Hi
    First of all Congratulations for your Graduation.
    And Thank you very much indeed Jeremy Blum,
    I am really waiting for this sort of tutorials on Eagle CAD…
    Now with the help of your tutorials,i think i can get much aware of PCB designing.
    This is a boon to get started with my own PCB Boards…
    I hope this will be a great success than your Arduino Tutorials..
    Go on Jeremly..

    Thanks &Cheers ,
    Srikanth Gangula

  7. I think that the open source EDA tool Kicad also deserves some attention. It can do almost everything the commercial tools do, but it’s free.

    1. I agree that KiCad is great, but I have much more experience in Eagle, so that’s what I’m doing the videos with. That being said, many of the techniques I’m discussing are applicable to both programs.

  8. Hello
    I’d like to know if Fritzing is a better way to go for a newbie, compared to Eagle…

  9. je veux dire que vous tutorial m’aider moi beaucoup,
    juste j’ai un simple remarque pouvez vous parler plus lent en anglais parce qu’il tu parler trés rapide

  10. Jeremy,

    As a professional automotive instructor and field engineer for over 13 years, I must tip my hat to you for a job extremely well done. You are truly destined for greatness as your outgoing personality, willingness to share for the betterment of others, and professionalism clearly shines through.

    While I’m not sure what your future plans are, the door is wide open for you in the automotive electronics arena. Just go to any auto manufacturer’s web site and peruse the careers page job postings and you will see that most are clamoring for electronics design folks. Telematics is the hot spot right now, but everything is electrinically controlled these days, so the sky is the limit.

    I am so happy to see your tutorials show up not only on CadSoft Eagle, but on the Arduino. I have just literally stumbled upon them and I’m so excited to be able to use them for a project that’s been on the back burner for a number of years: A transmission controller for a particular vehicle that has always had less than desirable shift characteristics because of the way the controller was implemented. I now will be able to use an Arduino to allow the driver to manually control shifting, and have a display to indicate the parameters. This will be, I’m sure the first of many projects for me, and I actually want to use the Arduino to develop automotive electronics training courses for industry technicians. Exciting Stuff!

    One of the things that really fascinates me is the Makerbot 3D printer: Wow, just think about the possibilities!

    Good luck to you Jeremy in whatever you do! If I can ever offer any assistance, just ask. I beleive you are located in the NY metro area, if I am not mistaken. I’m a displaced Long Islander living in Joisey!

    1. Gerard,

      Thanks for the kind note – I really appreciate it! The transmission controller you described sounds like an awesome project. I’d encourage you to share it online once you’ve completed it! I am in NY, and I’m always glad to meet up w/ like-minded people.

      -Jeremy

  11. Great Video!!

    I am trying to make a breakout board for the RF-BT0417C Bluetooth module but I have been unable to find an Eagle part for it. Are you going to cover making your own parts and libraries in your tutorials?

  12. Hello Geremy
    I want to thank you for your great tuturials.I’d love to watch then.Very helpfull
    Thanks for your time making then

  13. Hey Jeremy, Great tutorials.
    I’ve wached these and your Arduino Tutorials over many times.

    I am just wondering if its possible to create my own parts for Schematic view only .
    I do not plan on making it into a board.

    I only need the parts represented as a box, with a pinout.

    Thanks, Alex

  14. Buenas Tardes! Buen tutorial pero muy buenos. Soy nuevo en Eagle 6.02 apena estoy aprendiendo tengo una duda porque me marca el error Frame? es el unico me marca el error y los demas todos muy bien.
    espero tu respuesta y sigue el siguente tutorial.Saludo!!!

  15. would u please help me by telling the purpose of using resistor and capacitor.
    and i stuck in a ckt i actually can’t understand what component is used in the ckt becoz of hazzy stuff but i can’t post that ckt to you. how can i send it to you so that you can help me out by sorting that ckt please tell me.

  16. would u please help me by telling the purpose of using resistor and capacitor.
    and i stuck in a ckt i actually can’t understand what component is used in the ckt becoz of hazzy stuff but i can’t post that ckt to you. how can i send it to you so that you can help me out by sorting that ckt please tell me.

  17. I love your tutorials very much, I have followed you from the first arduino tutorial…wish there was a way I could reward you!
    I am just starting with electronics, and you have made a lot of things possible!

  18. Nice tutorial.
    Just wondering, would you be willing to do a tutorial for Linux Users?
    I have downloaded the Linux version and am wondering how to open sample files (a .brd and a .sch file).

  19. I must confess that the first time I used Eagle on my own I got very stressed and removed it away from my computer, I was used to other electronics software to make my schematics and pcb’s, and Eagle was something totally different.
    After watching your tutorial I got excited again and reinstalled it, now I’m more confident using it, though I still need and want a lot more to learn, like PCB making and so on.

    I’m waiting for the next tutorial on Eagle and want to thank you a lot for providing them to us.

    Keep’em coming! Best regards!

  20. I want to design a relay based circuit on PCB. In eagle library where do i find DPDT relays (AC and DC relays)? Do i need to download any library and use it or what should i do

  21. I am having problem in transferring adafruit eagle files to the library of eagle. I am using EAGLE V5.2, After copy pasting the adafruit library file to lbr folder, when I open schematics file and add components, it shows this error:
    Invalid data in file C:/Program Files/EAGLE-5.2.0/lbr/adafruit.lbr!

    Hope i can get some help on how to tackle this error.

    Many thanks for all your videos and sharing of knowledge, Keep up the good work.

    Good Luck!!!

    1. Version 6+ of eagle uses a totally different data format. You need to either find the old version 5 of those libraries, or you need to upgrade your Eagle program to version 6.

  22. What an outstanding starter course on EagleCad! Thanks for your effort. I am sure this will bring many people into creating their own PCBs. Keep up the excellent work!

  23. I want to use DAC0800 DIP in my schematic. But I can’t find one in the library.
    Please help.

  24. Awesome video. Great intro to Eagle. Looking forward to watching video 2. I’ve got a slightly newer version of Eagle so it did take a bit of interpolation, but it all worked out OK. Thanks a lot for your effort.

  25. hello
    this is the most amazing tutorial i have seen on internet. i learned a lot and now making my own circuit board.
    i have this doubt
    I want to give test points in my board so I put male connector from con-lstb but problem is it has minimum 3 pins now i want 2 and single pin testpoint. i found one in jumper library but
    1. what is difference between jumpers and male connectors
    2.what if i want to use circular test points? like- http://bit.ly/cKtnce
    is it surface mount or through hole??? and what about its library ? if i want to create one i need to know whether its through hole or not or should i use just single pad????
    thnks in advance

  26. how to add downloaded .lbr file to eagle library.from where i should download .lbr files? like P89V51RD2 is not available in the eagle library so what can i do?

  27. Nice one…

    I find Eagle rather confusing at times.

    Could you do something on creating busses? I’ve not yet managed to get my head around this. Say I want D2 to D9 of an Arduino to connect to two 4-way opto-couplers (to isolate the Arduino Digital I/O pins from the board they’re driving) – theonly way I’ve been able to do this is to either show individual connections or use labels, when what I want is them to form a bus between the Arduino and the opto-couplers on the schematic – it would then be so much neater…

    Thanks

  28. So funny haha we have the exact same wallpaper, thought that was so coincidental.

    Great turtorial used it for my college project. Cheers

  29. Excellent tutorial.

    BTW: I think you ordered the wrong capacitor: 100 pF instead of 10 nF (0.01 uF) ;-)

  30. I loved your concise logical presentation. You would be a great teacher.
    I have one query Jeremy: I can’t get a connection to show in board view between C2 & CR1220.
    Could you suggest what the problem might be.
    Thanks a heap.

  31. gud pm i would like to ask a question i followed all your instruction in making blinky board but after i autorouter the board it was different from your sample video. is there any problem in my board? or is it ok?

  32. I am having some trouble with the some of the things you did at the end. Can anyone help me??? DOesn’t have to be Jeremy, anybody is welcome to answer. First of all, I downloaded the newest version from the link that is provided above, but my version looks different than on the video, the symbols of some of the buttons are different. At the end of the video, when Jeremy goes to create the parts list by using design link, my version keeps throwing errors at me, on every single part. It says
    C:\Eagle-7.1.0\ulp\designlink-inc.ulp(438):
    XML error(8, 7): tag mismatch
    Included by C:\Eagle-7.1.0\ulp\designlink-inc.ulp(438):

    Can anyone help me figure this out? Is this a paid feature, cause if so it would really help to mention which features being shown can be done in the free version. I would assume this isn’t the case though since he did mention the free version and it’s limitations at the beginning of the tutorial.

  33. What if the component is not listed?

    I have to components that i cannot locate in the libraries. One is a chip LT1073 and the other is a ferrite miniature coil that was manufactured in China.

    How do you deal with these types of components?

  34. Hey Jeremy,

    I was wondering if the renumber-sch.ulp file is an add on.

    I am using the 6.6.0 professional version of EAGLE.

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