Hi,
I’m new with Fritzing and I’m trying to create a new part (motor driver) based on L298. It’s quite frustrating because nothing works as documented. The new part created is identical to the original, none of the modifications I did are there. I tried to regenerate the parts db but I get an error “Impossible to delete file parts.db”. When I delete it manually I get the error “Impossible to copy …”. Does someone can help ?
OS : Windows 11 64bits
Thanks !
How did you do the modifications? Assuming parts editor, you need to modify the svgs then load them back in to parts editor via File->Load image for view. If you don’t do that the part will be an identical copy of whatever you cloned it from with a new moduleId. These two parts creation tutorials (which is quite complex) apply to current Fritzing versions (many of the others are for older versions of Fritzing):
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.
If you are running a current version of Fritzing (1.0.3, or 1.0.4 just released) the data base rebuild needs to be done as administrator as I recall (I haven’t done it for a while), that said you normally don’t need to regenerate the parts database as it mostly applies to core parts not user supplied parts (the loader will deal with loading your new part in to the mine parts bin.) As well there are several versions of the L298 motor driver around already. A google search of the form “fritzing part L298 motor driver” should find them.
Peter
Thank you very much Peter. I’ve been able to edit the part in XML, which is quite simple.
I hope you realize how absolutely inane this is. In a similar situation, I made a copy of a part then expected to edit it in the parts editor. There are no edit options for me. I select an item (say a logo) in order to delete it, but there’s no option to do so. I realize that the editor design is not yours, but whomever thought (or didn’t) of how to edit a part fell short.
It is the lack of following established methods for editing objects (think 3D CAD among others) that makes fritzing lose lustre with the community.
Parts editor was not finished when development stopped in 2016 (or earlier) so it isn’t to blame, because it was never finished. That said I agree part making is complex, but it has to be in order for the code to work, the code internally is even more complex. The expectation was (and is stated somewhere in the docs) that you will edit the svgs in a svg editor such as Inkscape, but that said parts editor is still very limited (which is why I don’t use it but edit the xml files directly which requires just as much knowledge of parts making, but at least if you have that works which often parts editor does not.) Given the constraints I doubt part making is ever going to get much easier but it is possible if you are willing to learn how.
Peter
Part of the issue is probably naming. Users think of a ‘part’ as everything that goes into a part. The (developer) implementation though uses a zip file with multiple svg images plus a ‘part’ file with information to link things together. the ‘part’ editor only manipulates that that xml ‘part’ file. Not the images.
Reading that, it is ‘party’ time for all the different contexts of what ‘part’ is meaning.