Hi there!
Maybe you already ran into the same topic, but perhaps it´s also me being stupid… ;D
I just got the new versiond of Eagle (4.16) as freeware and tried to open different .brd files. Then something strange happens: ALL the holes of the vias and the pads disappeared! ??? ??? ???
What the? Tried to activate / deactivate different or all layers, but nothing get´s better. What´s up now? Wanna do my PCB! 
Somebody knows what´s up?
HI!
Can U tell me which .brd makes this problems?
And is the Via and Pad layer activated?
For better helping try the board from Cadsoft or try it here www.mikrocontroller.net.
PS: I have actualised my library for Eagle and I am only waitng for publishing until I have completed my Eagle3D library.
Jack
Yupp, like I said, I tried both to activate and deactivate Via and Pad layers (beside every other layer, too).
I tried core_v2 and the picburner boards. Both wont show me any holes. :-\
HI!
I tried with the new version in German and in English with SP2, without errors.
You can try this uninstall Eagle, make a backup of your folder and delete this Folder. After that download the english version (there a two Versions of them with SP2 and non SP2) and install it again.
If this is not working, download older Version from Cadsoft FTP or ask in Cadsoft Board.
Jack
If this is not working, download older Version from Cadsoft FTP or ask in Cadsoft Board
I’m with jack on that one. I’ve become quite comfortable with the program, but have frozen my version back at an earlier build, which doesn’t seem to be missing much of anything I need here. I remember them making some changes which required a more current version a while back, but I thought that was in going from a 4.0x up into the 4.1’s. The ones I’ve ended up with (4.11, 13, maybe 14?) have been equally stable on 98, 2K, and XP where I’ve used them.
IIRC, if you can get to their main “pub” FTP section, the versions went way way back. I’d say, if you can still open the boards successfully in any previous ones, just go ahead back a couple and live happily ever after. 
(just my personal two cents on it)
-George
PS to any avid Eagle “version followers”: Have they done anything dramatic, which would be worth leaving an earlier 4.1 for?
Ok, I´ll first try out the non-SP2 version of the newest Eagle and if this does not work either, I´ll switch to .11/.12 or whatever.
Just hope that functions. We gotta have to put the PCB´s “ready for printing” somewhere. The links on the portal are broken and the same work is done by every single one here, who makes the PCB´s by himself… 
I´ll talk to TK about that and let you know if the new (in the meaning of old) Eagle versions work out.
Greetz and Thnx!
Pay_C,
I’m now running a clean SP2 install on this main “home” rig (was SP1 a couple days ago). My old trusty Eagle will likely go back on there by tonight.
I’ll post too if it should do anything screwy.
George
Ooookaaaay, at least it´s clear now that I AM stupid anyhow…
Check this: Options / Settings / Misc / Display mode / real
Who the *“!$§”* should come there without searching for hours? That´s the point, where the holes are shown or not. *rollingeyes*
I do have NO idea, why that was not activated @my version, but hey, whatever.
So, I´ve got holes now, but they´re partly overpasted by the bottom layer (blue layer), which I naturally need for printing. How do I get those holes free at last (not that I already searched for a possibilty for a few hours again…)? Hope that Eagle stops doing this not-to-cewl stuff after that…
*** sorry for this long-a$$ post ***
Hey again Pay_C
Yeah, I end up having to reset a bunch of my prefs when I do a new Eagle install too. My first one is usually a black on white setting for the main board appearance, but I know most like that “negative” looking one. I also re-color a bunch of the layers while I route, so I can easily distinguish jumpers and unrouted stuff. I sometimes do simple, temporary route wires for the unrouted’s, into some unused layer, and give it a nice bright color, so they stand apart more from the real lines. You can also get them out of the way better and avoid that confusing criss-cross of like-colored lines, until you’re ready to work with them one at a time.
Good news on the blocked holes though:
I figured out a while back that they don’t actually print like that. Eagle will clear them out nice and clean on the print. I don’t know why it does that. I’ve tried to stop it before, but I’m not sure you can. To be safe, you may print to a regular piece of paper first, to see what Eagle ultimately does with everything.
The part I really hate about Eagle, is when route lines actually end up being multiple short segments, and you have to go in and try to unroute them all one by one, and can’t ever seem to get a “mouse grip” on the one you’re shooting for. Then, sometimes the current crap won’t even show up until you force the whole screen to redraw. Like if you try to unroute a wire to move some stuff, and after you’ve got the whole thing back to an airwire, it still has some mysterious, crazy looking, sharp “bend” or two in it. Then if you temporarily zoom out once, and zoom back in (or vice-versa) a new “blob” appears at the joint, from some free “bonus trace” that Eagle granted you.
I’ve seen it do that stuff a lot, like when you’ve made nothing but straight lines, and it puts those hard-to-grab baby segments on there. The worst is when you have to slightly move some component, which really only uses simple, straight traces, and the trace/pin connections stay put, so you end up with this mess of overlapping "V"s. Then when you have to partially rip them all up, to move and re-route the first segment or two, they’re all squashed together, so when you try to click the next one, you end up hitting one that you’ve already ripped, and Eagle rips the whole damn route, all the way back to the source. I sometimes wish I had a foot pedal tied to the “undo” keys. 8)
I’ve found that zooming way way out for most of that critical “pinpoint” crap can help a lot. The aforementioned temporary “zoom in/out” trick is also a good idea every once in a while, just to see what Eagle has actually done to the board.
BTW- When Eagle doesn’t detect that you’ve landed on a pin you were going for, and doesn’t make that “beep” noise, then you end up having to click it again to finish the connection, you can get more of those baby segments happening. The ones you can’t see against the pads will actually disappear on the print from that “hole clearing” thing it does. However, it will occasionally be missing a microscopic segment near the pad, which it sees as an open connection. It may complain if you run an error check or something, but as a safety precaution, I’ll often turn off all the main layers during the last stages of my board making, so I can see any of the unrouted “dots” against the wide open empty background.
Another one, if you haven’t hit it already, is that hatch patterns and stuff will disappear when you open a saved board, even though their parent polygon or fill is still there. They’ll re-appear if you do a quick “ratsnest”. I think that command may also clean up some of the other small anomalies I mentioned, but I always do a save right before I hit that, or any time I use the auto router, in case it makes a big mess. I don’t always trust the undo.
If any of the “Eagle veterans” here know the causes/solutions for any of that, I’m sure both of us would be glad to hear them.
Take Care,
George
PS- I hate to say this, as Eagle is such a standard here, but a discussion in the Yahoo PCB group yesterday got me thinking about it. Some of us had been complaining about the freeware’s size limits for smaller non-commercial stuff, especially with larger “simple” parts, like controls, and there have been a couple really strong recommendations on alternative apps. I’m thinking now that this generous freeware version of something which is sort of a standard in the lower end of the PCB app sector, has made it a lot harder for any promising new developers to get a foot in the door.
A lot of the complaints against the cheaper stuff, involve stability issues. If you think about it, if most people weren’t as quick to jump on the free version of something everyone talks about, and something they know goes up into the hundreds of dollars for most of the same functions, each of those smaller apps might have a substantially larger user base. The younger companies are also more likely to welcome any feedback they can get on individual system conflicts or bugs, as well as feature requests, and the actual programmers may even directly correspond with the customers.
It’s also easy to overlook the fact that many of us DIY’ers could find all of the main functionality we need from Eagle, in most of those other apps, without even crashing them. ;D I don’t see myself ever getting to a point where I’d be designing a five layer board, or needing any elaborate milling info to send to a PCB house. I also don’t even really use the autorouter much these days, but some of the others have their own versions anyway.
The price of the totally full functioning version of many of them is probably only around the second tier Eagle version, where you still couldn’t lay out a MB front panel pot/fader board or anything big. Sometimes they look more like half that price or even free, and I’m guessing the majority of us may never reach a point where we could realistically afford several hundred dollars for the real Eagle (or even the 2nd one), but many of us may reach points where we need to do a board which is more than a few inches wide or long.
I hate to compare CadSoft to such a horrible beast, but that whole ProToolsFree and 001/002 thing was a pretty close example of it. Most project studios and students jumped on it, just because they knew the name, or thought they were getting a necessary “industry standard” compatibility, even though they could’ve exported tracks or sessions in some form, from an alternative app to anywhere they went. As many of you know, it really screwed things up for some of the others, some of which had even better features or support in that range. Until Nuendo grew up, it was hard for any of them to gain any respectable “pro” reputation beyond the “MIDI sequencer” image.
I’m going to try my best to start looking harder at some of those others, if anyone has extensive experience or opinions on any. I’ve done this a few times, but I didn’t really try to use them too long. Funny, I think my familiarity with Eagle’s “twisted” logic actually made them harder to use. I figure if I got comfortable with that Eagle mess, I should be able to get used to them too.
DipTrace was highly recommended by someone in the PCB group. I looked at it yesterday. It goes up into the hundreds, but the lower “limited” versions make a bit more sense for DIY (I think there’s a small scale one which can do two or three layers and big boards). They’ve also got a 30 day demo.
To say it like that:
P H E W ! ! !
Yupp, really some long-*** post! Thanks for that looong hint! I´ll try that as soon as possible.
Yupp, I also know the most problems you stated out and I just agree. Anyhow, I really don´t think many people will read that now, as the topic title doesn´t say much about that. Maybe you wanna open up a new thread somewhere (Miscellanous or similar?)and really make it an “Eagle discussion” thread? What do you say (shortly 
;D)?
Thnx & Greets!
Works! ;D (at last)
So, I gotta print it out as a .pdf or so, just to be able to adjust the positioning of those PCBs percisely.
THNX again, Jidis and greetz!