Electronic – Automatically renumbering element parts in Eagle

After looking through help files and forums, I finally came out with the solution to my problem (with the help of many online contributors of course). The solution, as expected, has to do with the rest ring that eagle sets.

Initially the rest ring was set at a min value of 10 mil for my DRC file. I lowered the value of that to 6 mil to avoid overlap on the header.

NOTE ON THIS: BE CAREFUL WHEN SETTING MIN HERE BECAUSE EAGLE SETS THE MIN FOR THE WHOLE BOARD, SO OTHER COMPONENTS WILL ALSO BE AFFECTED. FOR MY CASE, EVERYTHING CHECKED OUT GOOD, BUT TAKE CARE IF YOU USE THIS SOLUTION.

I think it would be more convenient if you could individually set the rest ring size for specific components since you have components of different sizes on the board, however, I don't know if eagle has such capability. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Anyways, hope this helps someone else out there. I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a better solution than just modifying the rest ring size for the board, however, I wasn't able to find anything else.

Also, for those who didn't read the comments on this question, here is another resource for anyone who has stumbled here with a problem with Via diameters: VIA DIAMETER PROBLEM

To add to the solutions. I re-posted this question one element14 community forums for Eagle. Here is the response I got.

Yes, it is possible to place a bunch of parts in some regular pattern by using a script. That is exactly how I do this sort of thing when it comes up.

Use whatever your favorite programming language is to write the script. This should be little more than a bunch of MOVE commands that you execute in the board editor.

I use programs to write Eagle scripts enough that I have a library of routines that write out common elements of Eagle scripts and other related useful operations. For example, I have routines that open a script file, write coordinates in Eagle format after a 2D transformation, various layered ways to adjust the 2D transform like rotation and scaling, writing characters, strings, floating point numbers, write MOVE commands, convert between coordinate systems, etc.

Don't think you'll only do this once, so take a few minutes up front to write the subroutines. That will make this even easier the next time you need to automatically generate a Eagle script.