Eagle: How To Have 2 Projects Open At The Same Time...

[rs14smith]

Does anyone know if it is possible to have 2 separate projects open at the same time with the program Eagle? Every time I try to open a different project while 1 project is already open, Eagle wants to close out of the current project, or it hides the current project or something, I'm not 100% sure. This is for the Mac version of Eagle but I believe I had the same problem on the PC version too.

There are sometimes when I would like to be able to copy a component/connection from one project to another project without having to add the device/s from scratch.

 

[ronsimpson]

I don't know of a way. I have tried.

 

[DerStrom8]

I've never had a problem with it. I've mainly used winXP and win7, and they always just open another tab at the bottom of the screen. Not sure that works for Macs--been a while since I've used one of them, and I've never used one with Eagle. Anyway, I think all you need to do is go to the "control panel" (on Windows it's its own window) and select New-->Schematic. If you try opening a new one from your current project, it will always try to close it. You must access it from the "Control Panel" window.

As I mentioned, this is only for Windows. I've never used Eagle on a Mac before, so I can't say for sure. When you open up a PCB from your current schematic (switch to the PCB editor), does a new "window" come up? Where does the other one go? I assume that's how it would work if you open a new one up from the control panel as well.

Regards,
Der Strom

 

[jpanhalt]

I have rarely had to do that, but I just open another instance of the Control Panel. That is, in XP, start>programs>eagle xx. I have never had more than two Control Panels open at the same time, so I don't know if there is a limit.

John

 

[ronsimpson]

I have rarely had to do that, but I just open another instance of the Control Panel. That is, in XP, start>programs>eagle xx. I have never had more than two Control Panels open at the same time, so I don't know if there is a limit.

John

I can't get the second control panel to open.

 

[rs14smith]

I can't get the second control panel to open.

I was able to get it to work by following jpanhalt's suggestion. So you just have to click on the Eagle Icon again to open up the program a second time for a different project. It's a bit odd but it's good that it is possible.

It doesn't seem to be possible on the Mac. The Mac will only allow me to have one instance of the application open at a time.

 

[kubeek]

There are sometimes when I would like to be able to copy a component/connection from one project to another project without having to add the device/s from scratch.

You can do this by selecting what you want to copy, select the copy tool, then right click and select group:copy. After this, you can close the source project, open the target project and click paste.

 

[rs14smith]

You can do this by selecting what you want to copy, select the copy tool, then right click and select group:copy. After this, you can close the source project, open the target project and click paste.

Yeah I was able to accomplish that 1 time in the past, but couldn't figure out why it did not work the next time I did it. It's just easier for me to have 2 control panels open if I need to make a copy which appeared to work when I tried it today.

Thanks though I will keep that in mind next time.

 

[kubeek]

Wow, I am amazed that this copy process even works between different instances of eagle, that is in version 6.1. In version 5.10 this doesn't work.

 

[kubeek]

Yeah I was able to accomplish that 1 time in the past, but couldn't figure out why it did not work the next time I did it. It's just easier for me to have 2 control panels open if I need to make a copy which appeared to work when I tried it today.

Thanks though I will keep that in mind next time.

That is probably because you didnt get the part into the paste buffer. Maybe you just clicked copy instead of right click and copy group after selecting copy tool.

 

[jpanhalt]

Let me just add that the group copy or group cut command, depending on what version and settings you have, is very useful when you are at the stage of printing out a PCB. Show all, then copy/cut, close, open new brd, and paste. You can panelize your masterpiece. The only down side is that the numbers (names) update so if PCBcopy1 has resistors 1-8, then resistors in PCBcoyy2 will be numbered 9-16 and so forth. I read somewhere that the new version allows one to freeze the part numbers in each copy, but I have not tried that yet.

John

 

[rs14smith]

That is probably because you didnt get the part into the paste buffer. Maybe you just clicked copy instead of right click and copy group after selecting copy tool.

Yeah maybe that was it.