Looks like someone has a secret and they aren’t sharing . I had a look at core/svg and most of it is created by Inkscape. That should mean those parts have the same problem. However when I tried it, they don’t because the text isn’t in the svg files (except for the part label that is there as a text item). All the pin numbers and internal labels aren’t listed as text. It looks like there is a way to cause the text to be rendered without using the text directive xml so font sizes aren’t an issue and we just don’t know what the secret is. There is also a bug report that has a manual text edit workaround for this problem but I haven’t tried that yet (and it is from a couple of years ago and may no longer work).
I will have to agree with you… there has go to be a trick to it… people use inkscape all the time and create some great parts. I really don’t think the pixel thing was a problem, there may be something else, just don’t know what it is. inkscape seams to be pretty limited on .svg export options. If you are creating a part wit the FZ Parts Editor, when you load the .svg into the selected view and save the part, FZ error checks and rewrites the .svg then saves it into the specified folder. That is the way you are supposed to to create a new part. I create new parts and edit old parts a number of different ways… but I am not using inkscape.
Most of the original core parts were written using Adobe Illustrator, back in the days when when you did not have to pay monthly fees. Some of the Illustrator users moved to CorelDraw because they did not want to pay those monthly fees.
A problem I sometimes have with importing .svg files from Ink or Ai, they all have a little different format and some times they do weird thing, the image will disintegrate or crash the program. Sometimes I find it easier to make a part from scratch then to clean up a converted file. .svg files have a whole bunch of rules and different formats, FZ does a really good job of converting them… The Parts Editor seams to be able to convert all three most of the time. even in the FZ .svg file, the text is not sized in points, it is a number that I can’t figure out what it means.
I used grep on the core/svg directory to search for Inkscape and a large number of the files have Inkscape tags in them, but as noted don’t have most of the text rendered with fonts (the exception seems to be the part number). I’ll continue poking at it until I find a solution that will survive being rewritten by the parts editor (at least I hope I will ). I’ll also have a look at the file format document, it may be somewhat enlightening on what I need to do I hope.
When I create a new part, I make it completely outside of FZ. I will save the four .svg files and the .fzp in a folder with the name of the part and zip them all up into a .fzpz then import it into Fritzing.
Sometime I will create a generic connector in FZ with the number of pins and spacing I want. export it into the folder with the part name and extract the files… This will give me a starting point for the .fzp. I then import whatever .svg’s I need into CorelDraw with all of the pins/pads pre-labeled. The only problem is that the connector pcb.svg is in a vertical line. If I rotate it 90 deg. to make it horizontal all of the circles will be rotated causing those little red dots. Then I have to go back and un-rotate each circle individually.
While I may someday get to the point of knowing enough to do that, it isn’t likely today, or in the near future I don’t think, so I’m probably left with muddling around with the tools at least for now. It has as usual been a very frustrating day. At this point I can not make fritz screw up the fonts (despite having no problem in the past when I didn’t want to screw them up) so I can’t try any of the fixes I think I see (or more correctly I could try them but just because they seem to work it won’t necessarily mean anything because my current method that used to break isn’t at the moment!) Indeed the file format document is enlightening, for one, on what the units are: by default pixels (px) which are apparently defined in the standard as 90 DPI (although Illustrator uses 72 DPI) so it seems unlikely that that should be causing the problem. I think a more likely issue is that Inkscape changes around the xml for text and that may be confusing fritz (there is a construct listed there that is known to bother fritz, although it doesn’t appear to be what is in my xml). Once I can reproduce the failure dependably I should be able to experiment around to find a fix (and then, being lazy, perl and the XML parser are likely to be made to do it automatically for me). I think for right now I’m going to go spend money on toys on Ebay and beat my head against this wall some more tomorrow.
Progress at last! Started from scratch and recreated the part then edited the svg files with Inkscape. That screwed the font size (and the connector pins) immediately on loading to parts editor. Editing the removed pins out of the fzp file (which I hadn’t done before) fixed the missing connector problems and the fonts were still 0 size. So experimenting with the Inkscape svg files and following the advise in the fzp file format document and removing the px units from all the font statements using a text editor appears to fix the font size issue. Now all I have to do is figure out why parts editor is unhappy with the pcb file.
That sounds like a PIA way to do it… There has got to be a better way… Does everyone using Inkscape have the same problem? Every once in a while I will play with Ink to see if there is a way to select the preference of the .svg file output. Lately I have been trying to figure out the xml editor, I find it really annoying…
A PIA I’ll agree with but I expect it is somewhat that Inkscape is aimed at professional graphic artists and this application is too simple for them. A lot of my problems are with stuff I have no use for, it seem to be fairly well documented and of course it is free which is attractive. In any case I have a new version for consideration, as well (naturally) as a problem. I with much difficulty added some text to the silkscreen layer which shows up fine in Inkscape, but doesn’t make it into Fritzing. Any one have any idea why? As well comments on what can be or should be improved appreciated. PM6078-004_v4.fzpz (8.3 KB)
In PCB the outer rectangle can be coloured by
In Ink XML editor click on silkscreen so that it selects the outer rect in the drawing, hold shift and click on the black square on the bottom left colour bar.
There is some error in the copper layers.
I think you have text in copper, it should be in silk,
Copper is for contacts and holes, Silk is all lines and text.
I removed all the text and unindented the silk and copper to one level behind the top node and deleted all the rest, and no error.
Thanks for both. I’ve been changing the background color in file-document properties->background color from 255 255 255 (white like the silkscreen) to 90 90 90 (light brown) and didn’t notice the text that shows up isn’t on the correct layer. I’ll see if I can get it to the right layer (since it seems to be almost there …).
A late question: how do you determine there is an error in the copper? I don’t see anything unusual in the debug console output (the complaints are all about connectors and always seem to occur even though the connectors all seem to work in the end) am I missing some other source of error indications?
White silk is how they used to do it, or it was converted from an Eagle.
When I go to edit your part FZ says it can’t do separate copper layers, but when I looked at the XML it looked fine except for the text. I cleaned it up and no error now.
Unzip this one and open the pcb and look at the Ink’s XML edit tree and open up silk and copper groups, then compare it to your svg EDIT/XML Editor tree.
Ink has a bug sometimes when I indent nodes in XML edit tree where sizes change, so I didn’t check those as this was just and experiment. If you want to check them you might be able to use the svg.
Hmm, things are getting odd! I don’t see any errors when loading or editing my original part, it just doesn’t display the text (which I’ll work on). I thought maybe I had to import the exported part (which I hadn’t done, my bad!) to get the error message but for me, when I deleted the part and imported it again it is just as happy as with the original, no error messages either on load to Fritzing or when I started the parts editor from the mine parts bin although the xml is obviously wrong (even I can see that once it was pointed out ) Ah! late inspiration, deciding to be complete I re imported the part then moved it to the breadboard before starting parts editor. Now I get the error message from parts editor which I didn’t (and still don’t) when I edited from the mine parts bin. Any way, thanks, knowing what the problem is points me in the direction of a fix (either give up on silk screen text, which I don’t want to, or figure out how to do it correctly!) and I learned to put the new part in a sketch to be sure it really works!
After I imported I right-click Edit on the imported part in MINE bin and it gives the “can’t handle separate layers” error. Maybe it’s because I’m using the newer v0.9.3 - It is a slightly bigger download and it seams to have a few more bugs than the first -.
Hmm, I look to be on the latest version (I only downloaded my original at the end of August and I think the new version was earlier than that) plus I just did another download and the files compare identical. As to the text I’m hijacking the Arduino pro mini which has 24 .600 pins and text on the pcb silk screen and I’ll see if Inkscape will leave it alone enough to keep Fritzing happy . I’ve concluded that I don’t know enough to substitute the text xml from an unrelated footprint (which is how I did the V4 version). At least I’m slowly learning how to do things even if in an inefficient manner.
Aug should be the Fritz 0.9.3 ---- 186.786KB file version like mine.
I pretty much do all my parts that way now. I find a part with a view I like, save it as new, export, unzip, take the svg I want and mod it, and load just that svg into my new saved part that is derived from something similar. I mix and match svg from multiple parts all over the place. You can tell old svgs from new with white silks, or the coppers are separate instead on one inside the other.
OK. I’m back from beating my head (successfully this time against motor shaft encoders to beating my head against Inkscape where Inkscape is still winning. My current problem (and perhaps my entire problem) is that I don’t know and can’t figure out from their documentation how to group things or more correctly having created something how to move it in to the correct group. For example I took the arduino pro mini v13 part from core and swiped the pcb layout because it has text on the silkscreen. That seems to work ok, I get the text on the silkscreen by duplicating whats there and moving it around. That particular footprint however lacks the square box around pin 1. Easy enough (supposedly anyway), just use the rectangle tool to create one. Figured that out. However nothing that I have done so far will make it work correctly as I can not get it to go in to the copper0 layer. If in xml editor I select it and drag it in to the copper0 layer it appears to go and the xml looks fine. But save the file and restart Inkscape and the rectangle is back in root not in copper0 where I dragged it. Fine so supposedly selecting the element in xml editor and hitting the <, >, ^, and down arrow (which I don’t have or don’t recognize) will supposedly move it in some vaguely specified manner between what I think are groups (although the documentation is vague on that). However selecting the rectangle in xml editor and pressing "< " or “>” moves the highlight to the top entry (what I think is the root level) and does nothing about moving the selected item between groups. Can someone please explain how to move the rectangle in to the copper0 layer?
Trying their suggested method of cutting the rectangle to the clip board and then pasting it in place after selecting the group moves it in to copper1, but won’t (at least in any way I’ve found so far) move it in to copper0 where it needs to be. I’ll probably try manually editing the xml with a text editor next to see if that may work.
Open XML Editor in Ink.
Click on the node in the tree that puts a highlight box around the object.
Go to the top of the XML Editor and run the pointer over the faded boxes - they don’t look active but they are - and Indent. Unindent, up arrow or down arrow until it’s in the Copper group you want.
If you unindent or indent and the part disappears zoom out until you see it and drag it back in position, or reverse one step and note the node position in the main screen on the top bar - must be in arrow select - and just type in the coordinates again.
Are you sure you want that rectangle in copper because that will become a copper pad or a hole if it has a hole.
So simple yet so unclear in their documentation! Thank you that indeed appears to work! I had tried every one of the tool bar menus and never even noticed the one at the top of xml editor window. Yes the pad wants to be on the copper, it is the standard marker for pin 1 on a chip on the board and the generic IC has it, but for some reason the Arduino folks didn’t do it. Now to see if I can sort out text. At the moment (after working once) if I simply delete some text Inkscape totally rewrites the xml in to a form that Fritzing utterly rejects (the pcb turns in to on large black box with no pads!). So its back to figuring out what I did (and apparently in what order I did it) the first time. My hair will be grey by the end of thisi (but I may yet get a working part …)!
Those faded buttons fool everyone, even me. I should send a bug report to Inkscape, as I already have one there now.
Maybe try a minimal disturb method
IN XML Editor if you click on a text node of a text that works.
Press the duplicate button
Open it’s tree to the last line that shows the actual text and click on it.
Type the new text in the right pane, it’s instantaneous
Go back up to the primary text node in the tree and click on font size.
In bottom right pane change it and press set.
EDIT
Well that’s annoying.
It worked for one part, but text doesn’t work in this new part.
I get the error when loading the svg in FZ saying that the fonts will be converted, and when it does it turns tiny.
From memory the other part didn’t have the conversion error, and was fine.
EDIT EDIT
So I copy my text from the DENSO
Rotate -90º
Go in to XML Editor and change the label to MPX
Save and load.
Now the text doesn’t error or shrink, but somehow the full part name is substituted instead of the MPX text
. I had a look at core/svg and most of it is created by Inkscape. That should mean those parts have the same problem. However when I tried it, they don’t because the text isn’t in the svg files (except for the part label that is there as a text item). All the pin numbers and internal labels aren’t listed as text. It looks like there is a way to cause the text to be rendered without using the text directive xml so font sizes aren’t an issue and we just don’t know what the secret is. There is also a bug report that has a manual text edit workaround for this problem but I haven’t tried that yet (and it is from a couple of years ago and may no longer work).
but I expect it is somewhat that Inkscape is aimed at professional graphic artists and this application is too simple for them. A lot of my problems are with stuff I have no use for, it seem to be fairly well documented and of course it is free which is attractive. In any case I have a new version for consideration, as well (naturally) as a problem. I with much difficulty added some text to the silkscreen layer which shows up fine in Inkscape, but doesn’t make it into Fritzing. Any one have any idea why? As well comments on what can be or should be improved appreciated. 