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After June 2026: Eagle's End of Life

Autodesk announced Eagle's discontinuation in 2023, and the final sunset landed on June 7, 2026. New licenses are gone. Renewals are gone. Existing perpetual seats keep working but receive no updates, no security patches, and no library refreshes. Autodesk's official replacement is Fusion Electronics — a paid Fusion 360 add-on with an entirely different schematic environment and a workflow many Eagle veterans have rejected. The result is a long tail of orphaned .brd files at hobbyist forums, OSH Park projects, and small companies that built designs in Eagle 9 and now need to keep them readable for the next decade.

MakerSuite parses Eagle's XML schema directly, so it doesn't depend on the Autodesk client surviving. Eagle 6 introduced the XML format; everything from Eagle 6.0 through the final Autodesk release uses the same basic structure (libraries → packages → signals → wires → vias). Older binary .brd files from Eagle 5 and earlier are not supported — those are extremely rare in active use, but if you have one, the recovery path is to install the last free Eagle 7.7 release, open the binary, and resave as XML. Then MakerSuite reads it.

For projects that need an active future, the most direct migration path is Eagle → KiCad. KiCad 6 and later ship a built-in Eagle importer that handles .brd, .sch, and .lbr files. The conversion is not lossless — some library hierarchy is flattened, polygon priorities are sometimes inverted — but it's the cleanest open-source path. Use MakerSuite to spot-check both versions before deleting your Eagle source.

Reading a .brd File After Autodesk Cuts Off Support

If you receive an Eagle file from a colleague who can no longer install Eagle, MakerSuite is often the only viable reader. Drop the .brd, verify the layer count and signal count match what was expected, and export the BOM if you need a procurement record. The XML is human-readable, so in a pinch you can also open it in a text editor to confirm the design name, date, and software version stamped in the header.

Library compatibility is the main migration trap. Eagle libraries (.lbr) reference parts by name, and KiCad's importer can resolve standard footprints, but custom in-house libraries need manual reconstruction. Before migrating, use MakerSuite to capture screenshots of the original layout — those become your reference when verifying that the converted KiCad project still matches the physical board you built.

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