I was hoping to be able to reproduce my breadboard layout as it is.
My new frustration is trying to be able to attach capacitors, resistors, and other things with long bendy wires to the row and hole needed, which is easy in real life. I guess I just need to attack wires in fritz. It seems like it would be easy to make it so you could grab the wires you want and shape and put them where needed.
Oh well, I just started messing with it today. Seems fun.
I was just reading the tips and tricks and it states that I should be able to move the wires to the back.
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moving and selection
To constrain the motion of a part to horizontal or vertical, hold down the shift key as you drag it.
If you’re having trouble selecting a part or a wire (segment), try selecting the part that’s in the way and send it to the back: use the Raise and Lower functions on the Part menu or the context menu (right-click menu)."
You can move wires forward and back, but only relative to other wires. All wires are in front of all parts. Same for parts. You can move parts forward and back relative to other parts.
Another trick to help with selection, is to temporarily turn off some of the layers in the view (view menu). Turning off parts while leaving wires on makes it easier to select a wire, and vice versa. Hiding rats nest can make it easier to select wires.
Welp, yesterday I managed to move the red wire behind R1. I had closed everything for some reason and when I opened it back up I could do it.
I’m making a new circuit and am having no such luck sending the wire to back, restarting hasn’t helped. Note that each component will give you the option of putting it in any layer, it’s not grayed out.
Why then is this wire under the right hand cap, but over the left hand 3-pin device? Shouldn’t be possible? When I used the ctrl+[ and ctrl+] shortcut keys, the cap was then forced under the wire which sadly I now can’t change. I wish it were possible to better order all wires/ parts rather than wires always on top.
What Fritzing version are you using? On 1.0.4 on Win10 for me it appears to work (the wire is on top of both as I would expect.) You may want to upload your sketch (the .fzz file, upload is 7th icon from the left in the reply menu) so we can see your exact problem (uploading a sketch is always the best idea with a problem!) If the capacitor isn’t from core parts it may have a configuration oddness (this effect is possible to create by setting the layerId to breadboardbreadboard in the part.)
Thanks Peter. All good; thanks for helping. I’m using 1.0.4 on Windows 11. A pity the user doesn’t have full control over Z-order. Your test is a perfect example for why - what prototype is going to have a wire actually over the top of the cap & reg? I’m sure it’s been debated endlessly already, so no need to reply.
In actual practice there hasn’t been much comment on this. In 2016 development stopped so there wasn’t much point. In around 2019 development started again so it may be a good bet to open an enhancement request on github here
with what you would like to see and why. If it doesn’t impact too much (which it may or may not, I don’t know) the developers may be open to making the change. Seemingly simple changes can have very serious complications in the code though and I don’t know if this is one of them.
It’s not important enough to worry about Peter. So Fritzing not being developed much anymore? Any similar products? Some aspects of the UI are a bit frustrating. In some ways, using Inkscape would be easier if just a visual layout is needed.
No, the donations are partially funding development and development is running again with a release ever 6 moths or so. Since 0.9.4b about 2020 to 1.0.4 (current version with 1.0.5 in the pipe line) things are proceeding well The first year of two were mostly re establishing the infrastructure (the previous build environment was gone AFAIK) and the web pages and forum had no maintenance for 4 or 5 years. I don’t know of any other open source options, Kicad doesn’t do breadboard but does do multilayer boards, tinkerbox from Autocad does breadboard and I think simulation but is closed source and cloud based (you don’t have the code AFAIK so if they shut down you lose and your sketches no longer work because of no local code.)
