Homebrew PCB with eagle

[{ antonio }]

1.  What is the best PCB tutorial you have seen using EAGLE?

2.  What are good practices to use in EAGLE for a homebrew PCB?

3.  What are size pads and trace are you using on your homebrew board? 

4.  Does any have an Eagle library for the 12mm alpha pots?

5.  How do you preset your trace and pads in EAGLE before starting your PCB?

6.  How do you change the the EAGLE PCB Artboard size in advance? 

7.  Thanks for the help in advance!

[StereoKills]

http://gaussmarkov.net/wordpress/tools/software/eagle-cad/

Best Eagle tutorial I've found.

[{ antonio }]

Stereokills.

That answers question 1 can anyone help with answering questions 2-6.  Thanks in advance. 

[rustypinto]

2) This is will come with a lot of practice. IMO, you need to understand/ make a PCB outline with respect to the 1. enclosure size (which determines the PCB size), 2. Where the jacks, power, and pots will go with respect to where the PCB is located inside of the enclosure, and 3. how you will mount the PCB inside which determines what kind of provisions you need to make for doing so (eg. PCB mounting holes and/ or pot mounted, etc.).

Planning all of these things makes life extemely easy when you go and wire it all up. If you find something that works well, you can copy it over and over and become a ruthless layout-er.

3) The stock library provided by CADsoft is quite good. I recommend the "2,54/1,1" in the "Wirepad" library for all off-board wires. The 24mil trace width is good enough.

4) First you have to ask yourself how the potentiometer mounts inside the enclosure (this goes along with 2) above). I only say this because pots are often wired off-board and you simply need 3 pads to do that. Its good practice to keep the 3 pads beside each other, evenly spaced to make wiring easy. The main issue with this is the reclected symbol on the schematic shows up as 3 "X" symbols that you can connect to. Many times the pre-made symbols are not ideal, and its easy to improvise like this. You can also make your own symbols, which i recommend, with the library tool. But if you do want that specific alpha library, you may have to ask in one of the Eagle forums or search the CADsoft website.

5) The trace width is presetable when you select the "Route" function on the left-hand menu of tools. When in Route mode, you can either select the trace width under "Width" from the top pop-up menu or enter the value manually. Pads are entered through the schematic/ library from the aforementioned "Wirepad" library. You may have noticed something in the board view that looks like a pad, but these are vias. You can select via diameters, but if you're not working with 2+ layer boards, you don't have to worry about those.

6) To change to border, select "Move," then drag the border line to the desired size. Note you're constrained to a 4"x4" maximum in the free version of Eagle.