I am building my circuits preferably on stripboard. With the possiblity to switch to perf- or stripboard in the breadboard view fritzing is a good tool for designing and documenting.
However, what I am missing desperately is a generic resistor which has a correct upright standing footprint also in the breadboard view. Though it is possible to choose for example the 100mil spacing in the inspector, this shorter spacing is only reflected in the PCB view while on the stripboard it stays wide. Bending the wires is not a good option because the resistor is overlapping to much.
Is there any possibilty to create a new generic resistor series with correct 100mil footprint in the breadboard view? The color code may be dropped.
If you take steelgoose 's 300 mil resistor from here:
(complete with color bands) rotate it 90 degrees and then bend the lead from the top down to the pad .1 away I believe it will do what you want in breadboard no new part required. This also works with the standard resistor but it would be higher (as it is .4 mils as I recall). I may however be misunderstanding what you mean by overlapping too much, I assume you are not rotating the resistor, just bending the leads which would indeed overlap too much.
thank you very much for your quick and elaborate reply.
I tried also a lot and found more or less the same as you. As single custom part(s) I created already the required kind of resistor. And I used it successfully in the design of my circuits on stripboard. Here is e.g. my 1k version of it: Resistor upright 1k.fzpz (5.9 KB). It includes an appropriate 100mil svg-image for the breadboard/stripboard view.
But this “workaround” is somehow unsatisfying. It is not generic. For any new resistance value a new part has to be created.
I just would like to know from a member of the fritzing-Team if there is any possibilty to create (by the user) or to provide (by the fritzing developers) a generic resistor part which has a correct footprint (here 100 mil) in the breadboard/stripboard view. Some hint how to do a successful patch would do as well. Of course the “normal” generic resistor should still exist in parallel.
Bending the leads of a 300/400mil resistor image is not an option! On the stripboard this leads to a mess if several upright mounted resistors are close to each other (a frequent case).
Yeah, if it’s not a core part it isn’t truly universal - I make one-off odd ball length resistors all the time, eg 0.450" etc -, but the work around is that you put the value in the part# and right-click “show part label”, then right-click that label and choose what you want to show.
You can also click on a std resistor so it’s highlighted with a box, grab the corner and rotate it so it stands up at say 20º, and drag a leg down to the pin hole.
Isn’t there any hope for a sound solution? I mean any hint from the fritzing-Team how to create (by some tricks) a generic user part or even the understanding that this problem (non obstructing 100mil resistor footprint in breadboard view) should be considered in the next release.
About the workaround to tilt the resistor image and bending one of the leads down: That was indeed my very first atempt to solve the problem. This may be fine on the breadbord but on the stripboard (with placings as to be done also on the real board) it leads to an awful mess. One part obstructs the other.
Sure there is a sound solution: dig in to the source which the developers have provided and make the necessary changes. It just isn’t easy or effortless. In this case that probably isn’t necessary since all that is really needed is to convince Fritzing that your part should be considered part of the family of core resistors which is possible by changing the part meta data (it may require the color bands or at least their labels as the core scripts change the color bands and may be unhappy if the labels aren’t there). As far as I am aware the developers don’t read the forums, they have not been seen to comment even if they are reading them. For instance offers do translations to other languages (which is far more valuable than enhancement requests) have gone unanswered for months. When I finish the current part I’m working on I’ll have a look at this.
The thing about BB view is that it isn’t exactly real world, even thought the FZ crew probably envisioned it as real world so beginners could do exactly what they see. Some people make parts fit the breadboard even though they can’t actually connect to a breadboard, so it’s a representation of a part. Even the FZ crew went with a lying down resistor for colour code visualisation, which is fine for breadboard but does not work for real world prefboard/stripboard. Basically prefboard/stripboard should be moved out of BB view and put in PCB view. The work-around that I suggested to another guy a while back was make a representation of a prefboard/stripboard in PCB view where everything is already dimensionally accurate. To do it you grab a via from the core bin, resize it to what to want, Ctrl+D it 100 times, and snap them to a 0.100" grid. Then just use straight traces where your parts connect.
I understand. May be from a systematic point of view the perfboard/stripboard rather belongs into the PCB view.
However, I like that photo realistic appearance in the BB view. It’s ideal for compiling instructables which is my intention.
O.k. for the moment I can live with the current workarounds. Thanks so far. In case of potential further findings/developments I will mention them in that thread.
Since I finished the part I was working on, you were next on the list. No development effort needed only more experience in parts creation (which isn’t simple but it is simpler than development). Your part had a number of errors in a number of places and was missing the color bands which core is looking for to modify (I don’t actually know if it would break if they weren’t there, but I expect so). So I had to clean up the svgs somewhat as well as change the metadata a bit to match (exactly!) Steve’s original mini resistor to make Fritzing think this is a part of the core parts resistor family. Note you don’t appear to be able to edit this with parts editor because parts editor will remove some of the needed meta data, so you need to be able to edit parts raw (which is normally how I work anyway). In any case I believe this will do what you want, it is your original (with some changes such as color bands added in bb, and the terminals cleaned up in schematic) but which Fritzing accepts as a member of the resistor family and will thus change the values (and the color bands in BB) for.
wow, great! You solved it. That’s exactly what I was looking for.
My suggestion is that you share it offically under parts submit. And don’t forget to *change the author’s name in .fzp file to yours. It’s your merit. I will mention that submission in my instructables which will go online soon.
By the way: I disclosed the secret about keeping self created parts generic. It is the “module” ID-name. If the parent ID is just supplemented in front to create the new unique ID, the part stays generic. As you did: “ResistorModuleID” to
"_Upright_ResistorModuleID". May be, you were already aware about that.
It isn’t actually my merit, I learned how to do it from @steelgoose (along with most of the rest of what I know about parts creation ). It is a little more complex than just the moduleid, parts of the family tags also have to be correct and I expect (but didn’t test) that if the color bands aren’t in the breadboard svg that it will also break as the code can’t change the color bands. I didn’t put it in parts submit (or better yet, in a pull request on github which is about the only way I have seen new parts make it in to core lately) because I’m not sure there isn’t a better way to do somehow. People searching for it will find it here.
A resistor is a two-terminal electrical component which implements electrical resistance as a circuit element and in electronic circuits, resistors are used to reduce current flow, adjust signal levels and to divide voltages also terminate transmission lines, among other uses.
You solved it. That’s exactly what I was looking for.
). It is a little more complex than just the moduleid, parts of the family tags also have to be correct and I expect (but didn’t test) that if the color bands aren’t in the breadboard svg that it will also break as the code can’t change the color bands. I didn’t put it in parts submit (or better yet, in a pull request on github which is about the only way I have seen new parts make it in to core lately) because I’m not sure there isn’t a better way to do somehow. People searching for it will find it here.