While sometimes quick and dirty works fine for footprints, if you ever have to deal with enclosures or particularly dense boards, you'll soon find out that accurate footprints can make your life much easier.

There are some really nice, detailed and accurate footprints in the default Eagle libraries, but there aren't a lot of resources out there on how to create them.  This guide will hopefully serve that purpose, highlighting what works for me making connectors and similar types of footprints.

What You'll Need

1. Cadsoft Eagle
2. An accurate mechanical diagram of the part in question
3. A decent image editing program (Gimp, paint.net, Photoshop, etc.)