eagle sparkfun library voltage regulator symbol

Community PCB Design
1

on my first project (atmega8 microcontroller dev board) I want to use the sparkfun library symbol for a LM7805 voltage regulator. There are two of them… and on the board one looks like it is a “right angle” vreg, where as the other is standing up, with what looks like a boundary for a heat sink.

I don’t plan to use a heat sink on my board, the yellow outline for this is on the tDocu layer, will it show up on any of the files needed for BatchPCB?

Is it possible to move the outline to another layer? or get rid of it altogether since I don’t want the outline of a heat sink on my board?

Are symbols sometimes “overloaded”, where users will edit them on-the-fly to suit their needs?

Thanks in advance…

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2

SteveNM:
I don’t plan to use a heat sink on my board, the yellow outline for this is on the tDocu layer, will it show up on any of the files needed for BatchPCB?

No. The Bdoc and Tdoc are intended for viewing in

the EAGLE editor, and are not woven into the Gerbers

when the SFE CAM job is run.

SteveNM:
Is it possible to move the outline to another layer? or get rid of it altogether since I don’t want the outline of a heat sink on my board?

Yes and yes. Any layer can be moved

to any other layer by selecting the elements and using

the ‘tools’ to change layer. For a component this must

be done in the library editor (not the board layout editor).

To preserve the original, do your edits on a copy.

SteveNM:
Are symbols sometimes “overloaded”, where users will edit them on-the-fly to suit their needs?

Nope. The library editor is very easy to use and most

of us are there frequently to tweak parts as needed.

The downside is that any library you haven’t created

yourself should be checked thoroughly for errors.

Most of us have created new parts as needed. All

parts used in a schematic (and board) bind to the

schematic files and will open on a different instance

of EAGLE (that may not have the original library).

3

Take what was mentioned about checking libraries seriously. It’s no fun to pay $40 to have a board made and then find out that one of the library components has an incorrect pad layout. That happened to me recently. Apparently, someone had created a library for a design and then uploaded it to CadSoft’s site without ever having made a board with that part.

I’m now much more apt to just make my own library parts rather than rely on something I got off the internet somewhere.

4

I’ll second that. I’ve made my own libraries where either I make the layout myself from scratch, or base it off a pre-existing supplied library design. That way I can be more certain about the layouts I’m using. Yes it eats up time and there’s always the chance of making a mistake (I’ve already had a single pad on an SOIC-8 offset by 0.05mm) but I’d rather trust myself rather than a library put up by someone I know nothing about and I know it’s designed to my specs

5

It can be useful to print the layout 1:1 and check that all the parts match the pads. I sometimes just print the footprint when designing a new part, and check that against the part.

Leon