Originally when I was designing the Eagle part library for my project, I added the text around the footprint to look like what I wanted the final silk printing on the board to be like. Now I have nothing in my silk layer but the board layout looks fine if the footprint essentially acted as the silk layer. Is there a way to copy the package footprints into the silk layer?
Also, the SparkFun tutorial on “making a better PCB” has this CAM job that uses tPlace and bPlace for the silk. What’s the difference between that and _tSilk and _bSilk?
The silkscreen layer is just defined when you process your CAM job. After opening the CAM job, look at the top silkscreen tab - there you can select what EAGLE layers you want to make up the silkscreen. Personally, I use the Dimension, tPlace, tNames, tValues, and Document (for my own annotations) layers. Just make sure whatever layer the footprint is in is included. You can show/hide different layers in the board editor to make sure that what you’ve selected is actually what you want.
I don’t see a _tSilk or _bSilk layer in EAGLE by default. If you’ve added them for silkscreening, you can go ahead and use them in the silkscreen CAM job.