Adding labels to a schematic

1

Hey Kind folks. Total Fritzing newby here so please be gentle.

I might be using Fritzing wrong or I might have the wrong tool entirely but I’m trying to use Fritzing to capture the schematic for a wiring diagram for our race car. In the following snippit I’m routing a wire from a 47 pin ABS connector to a 16 pin OBD-II diagnostic connector.

It would be very useful - frankly essential - to be able to “label” the function of this wire - in this case it’s TXD1 Data communication. Is there a way to add a text or a label to a pin - or to a wire?

It would also be useful to label wire colors, etc.

If I am using the wrong tool for this please just let me know.

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2

Assuming I understand what you are asking this should do what you want.

In core parts->schematic click on text and drag it in to the sketch.

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in Inspector (the lower right window) set the text you want and optionally the font size below it and it will write your text in to the schematic.

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For wire color right click on the wire and select wire color

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and the color of the wire will change.

Peter

3

Peter,

Thanks! That’s great! As I was exploring this, for my application one thing that would be cool would be if I could have a version of the Text “part” that actually had connectors on either side. That would allow me to literally place the text in-line on a wire and as I moved the wire around the text would follow (does that make sense)? I tried editing the text part to create a new part from it but the edit part menu is grayed out when I select text.

Does this approach make senser and is there a way to implement it?

Thanks!

Dave

4

ps… I tried creating my own part but I can’t figure out how to make it “stretch” when I add longer text - perhaps that’s not a good idea anyway?

5

Or maybe more specifically - how do I create editable text on a new part?

6

There isn’t a way (that I know of) to stretch a part so it would have to be wide enough to contain the text you want. You could make multiple parts of different lengths and choose the appropriate size (swapping the part to a longer or shorter one when you run out of room or reduce the text.) The text should be modifiable from Inspector via the label field if the appropriate code is available to do that though (I think it may be present but I am not sure.) That is also the easiest way to get a part with connectors. Presumably you only want it in breadboard and/or schematic (it doesn’t seem to make sense in pcb.)

edit:

This in fact won’t work. It appears the chip label code is only active in generic IC parts so the text can’t be modified in Inspector. As well the color and length of the line are not changeable so I think the idea is unworkable. It could possibly be implemented by the parts factory, but that would be a code change and you would need to make an enhancement request on github here

and convince the developers it is a good idea and has people that want to see it implemented.

Peter