This post describes in video two new features of eagleUp 4.3 : the use of an attribute to specify the model for a component, and how to scale up/down and change the unit in your model.
eagleUp 4.3 introduces an attribute to link various skp models to a single Eagle footprint.
The default method to import the model of the part on the PCB is to look for a skp file that has the same name as the component package in Eagle. If my resistor R32 is based on the package R0805, eagleUp will look in your /models folder for a R0805.skp file. It can be located anywhere in the /models folder, in my case I saved it in /models/passive/resistors/SMD/
This method works well but sometimes you share a footprint between various component that are physically different. In my case I have a single 0805 package for all my passives: resistors, capacitors, inductors… Or you can have male and female connectors sharing the same footprint.
To differentiate them, you can now use an EAGLEUP attribute on your components. This attribute can be defined within the library (it then applies to all your components) or on board level for a single part. This flexible approach should work for every workflow. The new attribute feature only works in Eagle 5.x and newer.
The attribute value specifies the model name to use. If necessary you can also make some alteration on the model : change side and rotate. This is particularly useful for connectors that can be flipped in many orientations. The full syntax of the value is {part_name}{;{M}Rxxx}
eagleUp resizes your model
With eagleUp 4.3 the Plugins menu now has new feature to help resizing your models. By default eagleUp works in a 1000:1 scale that helps designing small features. As soon as your model is ready you can easily scale it down to the natural 1:1 scale if you prefer it. For imperial units users, you can also display the measurements in inches.
The initial 4.3 release had a minor bug that made the resizing wrong. This has now been corrected. If your scaling is wrong (scale by 10 was 100, and scale by 1,000 was 10,000) you can simply download the installation files again and replace the eagleUp_import.rb file, or correct the wrong line by yourself. The error was at line 808, you should replace “for iter in 0..iterations” by “for iter in 1..iterations”.
Eagle meets SketchUp 