Eagle CAD cut and paste (again)

[shobley]

Is it possible to merge two board and schematic layouts in Eagle?

I come up against this problem once in a while, and always find a work around for it - but never a solution.

I have two independent Eagle projects, each with their own BRD and SCH files. I can cut and paste schematics no problem, but this always has the knock-on effect of inserting unplaced/unrouted parts into the BRD file of the destination project.

Is there no way to merge two schematics *and* board layouts? I spend a long time laying out the parts in both projects, I really don't want to have to do it all over again.

Any attempt to paste into a BRD file always results in "Please do this in the schematic"...


Is there a utility anywhere that can merge two projects? Maybe that's the way to go...

Steve

[Suraci]

I'm sure this question comes up alot, I have done it and all appears to work OK, but it's messy and I'm not saying it's the best way. Essentially it's a cut-and-paste operation and here are the steps.

1. Open the source design, turn on all layers and cut the entire board
2. Open the target board only (not the schematic) - this will intentionally break the forward/back annotation.
3. Paste your copied source into the target board. Save board
4. Open source schematic, cut the entire source schematic
5. Open target schematic only (not the board) and paste the source schematic

Essentially that's it, but now you need to repair the forward/back annotation which will vary depending on the details of your design. When you pasted the board, the pasted nets would have been renumbered so as not to duplicate the source nets. The same is true for the schematic paste, but the problem is the two are not in sync so when you run an ERC you'll see Pins/pads with different connections.

To repair the above, rename the nets of the pasted section in the board. You'll probably have to rename to an intermediate name to avoid inadvertently joining nets during the renaming operation.

TIPS:
If the pasted nets have unique names (from the source nets) then no auto renaming will take place and no manual renaming should be required.
It should be fairly easy to write a ULP to perform this renaming automatically.

Jonathan