I just got this software and I’m trying to create a simple customized part that is based on an existing board. I added the part to “My Parts” bin but when I right click on it, the “Edit par (new parts editor)” option is greyed out. In fact, this is greyed out for every part. The parts_editor_help.phtml says that I should be able to create new parts from old parts so I am very confused. What am I doing wrong?
Here is a screenshot of what I am seeing:
The parts bin is read only so parts editor can’t edit the part there. You need to drag the part in to the sketch then select the part in the sketch (which is writable) and parts editor should be active. I will note that modifying parts is difficult and if you need only a small number of parts, probably not worth learning. The first thing to do is a google search of the form “fritzing part part_name” (where part name is the part you want) which should find any available parts. Note not all parts on the net work correctly so check that whatever you find works correctly. If you want to make parts these two tutorials apply to current Fritzing versions
I lately learned there aren’t links to the videos in Old_Grey’s tutorial so you need to do a google search for the title and then they come up on YouTube.
Old_Grey’s tutorial covers parts editor, I rarely use it and thus didn’t cover it. Good luck (unfortunately you will probably need it 
!)
Peter
I don’t see a way to edit the part once I’ve placed it in the sketch either. I found videos on how to edit the part, but they reference unselectable options like “Edit Part” or “View > Parts Editor” or right clicking the part in the sketch and selecting “Edit Part” there. The latter of which isn’t even an option in the right click context menu.
For me on Fritzing 1.0.5 on Windows, works fine. Here I drag the generic IC from core parts in to the sketch then right click on the part which opens a menu, and select parts editor.
clicking on that opens the parts editor for me like this
ready for editing. Actually now that I tried it so does right clicking on the part in the parts bin
clicking on that brings up the parts editor.
It that doesn’t work for you I would guess there is something wrong with your installation and you should likely try reinstalling Fritzing.
Peter
I appreciate your reply but I’ve already tried re-installing it using the MSI installer that I paid to access today. It just doesn’t seem to work for some reason.
Ah! The perf board is a parts factory created part and you can’t edit it with parts editor I don’t think (as it likely is created on the fly and doesn’t exist to edit.) Does the generic IC that I used work for you? If not there is a deeper problem somewhere. If you don’t have any imported parts in your mine parts bin clearing the user directories may help (the user directories don’t get cleared when Fritzing is installed to keep your imported parts, back 5 or so years ago this was a more common problem, it hasn’t been an issue in the last few years,) Here are instructions on how to clear the user directories
There are two user directories (with your parts and the parts database) which don’t get touched during an install (to not affect your sketches during upgrades). On Windows they are in
c:\users\username\AppData\Fritzing\roaming\Fritzing (which is a hidden directory so you need to enable hidden directories in explorer) and
c:\Users\username\My Documents\Fritzing (where username is your windows id)
If you don’t have any parts or sketches you want to keep you can just delete those two directories and Fritzing will recreate them, or you can move them aside by renaming them if you want to keep something in them.
linux
~/Documents/Fritzing/parts
~/.config/Fritzing
Mac
/Users/username/Documents/Fritzing/parts
~/.config/Fritzing
Peter
