Add enter-able property box for parts in Inspector

I Edit/Save as new part, a Schottky.
Then I Edit/META the new part and add voltage and power boxes in Properties, but leave them empty so you can add what you like in Inspector.
Back in FZ I pull the part in and the extra properties I added are in Insp, but they are not the white enter-able boxes but grey nothing.

Any ideas?

There seams to be a big fault in FZ properties.

In FZ part Edit you can add different properties, but they don’t work in Inspector.
More weirdness.
I was able to delete the value of a part in properties/part number with FZ Edit, and it came through Inspector as blank, but when I entered a value in Inspector part number, the value now wouldn’t delete in FZ Edit. I had to delete the whole part number section in FZ Edit, but when I reopened the part in FZ Edit part number was back, but blank.

I think if you can’t make parts technically perfect with the graphical tools, FZ has a big problem. Basically if you need to actually code parts to get them to work that is one step too far.

Added 6 things in Part Edit properties, and nothing.

Even in the .fzp file, which you shouldn’t have to directly hack, there is no way to discern between an enter-able box and non enter-able box.
>

      <property name="family">capacitor [bidirectional]</property>
      <property name="variant">variant 3</property>
      <property name="part number"></property>
      <property name="power"></property>
      <property name="capacitance">100nF</property>
      <property name="plastic"></property>
      <property name="package">100 mil [THT, multilayer]</property>
      <property name="layer"></property>
      <property name="metal"></property>
      <property name="colour"></property>
      <property name="free"></property>
      <property name="voltage"></property>
     </properties>

Have you tried putting in an initial value? The only obvious difference between non changeable and changeable is that the changeable ones have values already and perhaps that’s what it wants …

The properties section in Part Edit/Metadata doesn’t seam that good. You can pull a CORE part into a view and change voltage, power, etc - if it has it - in Inspector, but when you save that as a new part some of the options where you could change the value in the CORE part become fixed and not enter-able in the made part. Basically you can grab the CORE Zener and change the voltage and save it as a new part, but it is now fixed forever to that voltage, unless you totally remove the whole voltage category in FZ Edit/Metadata/Properties and have nothing. Unfortunately you can never add anything back that will do anything, just a fixed value.

The reason why it’s not good is, imagine you make 5 different length Zeners and want to share them, well you have to make 5 different length Zeners, plus 5 different length Zeners for every voltage, power, etc. It seams that FZ only allows a specific part, not a general flexible part.

This sux. Yesterday I couldn’t change the voltage of a created zener, every time I changed it in FZ Edit the old value would reappear after I pressed enter, but now during a new video tutorial showing the problem, the stupid thing changes like it’s supposed to.

I wish we could solve all these hard to replicate annoying bugs.

Is there a tutorial on how to setup property menus in the new FZ please?

It says in this email that there is no need to hack the fpz file. I can’t find another mechanism in the UI. Obviously I’m not searching the tutorial using the correct magic keyword.

I found this in an existing part’s fpz:
<property name=“Maximum Resistance” showInLabel=“yes”>10kΩ</property>

If I move a standard resistor to my own user area, then the “Resistance” menu stops working. I am assuming that there is some path I need to fix up?

Are you talking about parts .fzpz.

When you save a part to MINE bin it losses some of it’s general properties, and becomes a specific part

Like so many things, no :slight_smile: . There is passed down lore (and reading the source) that sometimes helps.

I believe the statement was you shouldn’t have to hack rhe fzp file, but in practice that isn’t the case usually.

Not a path, you may be able to change some fields in the fzp file of your part to convince the code that your new part is part of core (you can’t do this via parts editor, it won’t let you). It usually depends on moduleId and family and doesn’t always work (such as my breadboard hack I did for someone a couple of weeks back, it mostly works, except selection in Inspector). The code has special tests for some functions in inspector (such as changing the resistance value) which is why it doesn’t work in the general case. If you post the part you want to change the resistance of (7th icon from the left in the reply menu) I’ll have a look at it and see if I can make it work with inspector. Assuming I can modify it I’ll tell you how I did it.

Peter

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

Most kind of you to offer to help. It’s not worth bothering you. I was just trying to dig into all the corners as I’m learning about FZ.

I can see that folks have spent time trying to create tutorials, and I can understand how hard it must be to explain all the edge case.

What I’m really hoping is to be able to start development up so we can eliminate some of the edge cases, but so far that is proving difficult and I’m about the only one even trying. The interfaces to inspector I think should be public and not require code changes to work. Obviously that wasn’t the original plan, or (like so much else) it didn’t get finished before funding ran out.
Of the tutorials around, only these two refer to the 0.0.3b version, most of the rest are for earlier versions and sometimes don’t reflect current reality.

Peter