I have used Fritzing successfully for through hole projects but now I need to create a surface mount board. I cannot find any way to find(search) for a 44 pin QFN design for IC. Can you tell me if this is possible or not.
FYI - This is for IC PIC24FJ128GA204
Welcome aboard. This post points at an atmega in qfn44. You should be able to rename the pins to do what you need, if not post again and I will create a part.
edit: Schematic in the original chip is chip specific and thus is unlikely to work for what you want. In this part I replaced schematic with a 44 pin layout which will allow changing chip labels to create new chips for other folks.
edit2: Replaced part with one with editable pin labels true (the original had it set false) so the labels can be edited with Inspector.
edit3: Change the package from QFN to TQFP (which the chip actually is)
edit4: (perhaps a record!) With edit pin labels set to true, the schematic svg gets substituted for a hard coded one within the Fritzing app (ugly!). Modified the schematic svg (partially) to match so the part looks correct in schematic and replaced the part below yet again.
edit5: Nov 2023 While looking at this because someone wants a VQFP-44 footprint I discovered schematic is misformatted and pin 1 isn’t obvious enough in pcb. Corrected both in this replaced part.
PIC24FJ128GA204.fzpz (12.0 KB)
Peter
Perfect, thank you for solving this issue for me.
Peter
I loaded this to my circuit and tried to create pin labels but the “edit pin label” field says false. Is it possible to name the pins?
Thanks
Yes, I just replaced the part with one with editable pin labels true so they are editable in Inspector. You could also have made a new part with parts editor, but inspector is easier. You will need to delete the current part before it will let you load the new one as the moduleIds are the same.
Edit: Note if you want to add alternate pin descriptions to the various pins when you hover over a pin in any view, you can edit the part.PIC24FJ128GA204_8903ac93cd3db0fdd1143f9428ed518e_1.fzp file with a text editor (after unzipping the .fzpz file to create the 4 files) and add them to the description field in the xml for the pin. I was too lazy to do that and just used the notation in the datasheet. To change the fields in schematic you need to use an svg editor such as Inkscape on the svg.schematic.PIC24FJ128GA204_8903ac93cd3db0fdd1143f9428ed518e_1_schematic.svg file (which does much the same as the edit pin function in Inspector.)
Peter
Peter
I removed the old file by right clicking on the icon. Now when I try to import the new file it says there is already a file loaded with this id. Can you help with this?
Thanks
Ian
Yep, that’s likely a bug. Do the delete then exit Frizting and restart it and it should really clear the delete and let you re add it. It looks like the delete doesn’t really complete til Fritzing shuts down for some reason.
Peter
Peter
The part icon is no longer showing so I cannot delete it in fritzing. If I try to import it then I get the error - see screenshot.
I even tried to rename the file and reload but each time I get the same error.
Is there another way to correct the situation. Or can you send me a file with a different name so it avoids the error?
Thanks
Ian
OK, things just got more complicated unfortunately. You need to delete some files from the user directories to clear this, but since all your loaded parts are there, it is best to take a backup first. The directories depend on OS on Windows they are in:
c:\Users\username\My Documents\Fritzing (where username is your windows id)
on Linux in
~/Documents/Fritzing/parts
and on the Mac in
/Users/username/Documents/Fritzing/parts
So first, take a copy of that directory in case of error (copying it back in will restore it). Then if you have no parts other than the pic in the mine parts directory, just delete the entire directory will do the job (Fritzing will recreate it on restart.) If you do have other parts you want to keep, then in the following directories
prefix-by-os/Documents/Fritzing/parts/usr/
delete file
PIC24FJ128GA204_8903ac93cd3db0fdd1143f9428ed518e_1.fzp
which should appear there (perhaps along with others.) While technically that should be enough, for safety delete the 3 svgs as well, they are in
prefix-by-os/Documents/Fritzing/parts/svg/user/breadboard/PIC24FJ128GA204_8903ac93cd3db0fdd1143f9428ed518e_1_breadboard.svg
prefix-by-os/Documents/Fritzing/parts/svg/user/pcb/PIC24FJ128GA204_8903ac93cd3db0fdd1143f9428ed518e_1_pcb.svg
prefix-by-os/Documents/Fritzing/parts/svg/user/schematic/PIC24FJ128GA204_8903ac93cd3db0fdd1143f9428ed518e_1_schematic.svg
While I think the reload will overwrite them, deleting them is safer. With that done you should now be able to start Fritzing and load the new part. Sometimes Fritzing forgets to delete (or possibly fails and doesn’t notice the failure) to delete the files during a delete. I have never been able to reproduce the problem in a repeatable manner to be able to try and fix it (but do know much of the code ignores return codes which it should not be doing!)
Peter
Thanks Peter
Everything is back to normal. Very much appreciate your very timely response to these issues. I am very impressed with the support.
Thanks
Ian
Peter one other question regarding the pic24fj128ga204. The version I have is the TQFP which is slightly bigger than the QFN. Is there an easy to change the dimensions to the TQPF 10x10x1.0 mm package?
Thanks
Ian
It is relatively easy to do. You need to edit the pcb svg file
svg.pcb.PIC24FJ128GA204_8903ac93cd3db0fdd1143f9428ed518e_1_pcb.svg with Inkscape or another svg editor and change the pad size and spacing. Easy to do if you are familiar with making parts, less so if you are not. You also need to watch for Inkscape doing things like moving pads via transforms (which Fritzing sometimes doesn’t like) and then edit the fzp file to change the package type, In the end it was easier to do it than try and explain what need doing 
. If you keep a copy of the original part’s fzpz file you can uncompress it and try and make the changes to the svg and fzp to match the one I replaced above (which has the new footprint which still needs to be checked against a real part!) if you like.
Peter
Peter
Thanks. I will give it a try.
Ian
Peter
I was able to change the files you indicated. How do I put them back into a .FZPZ zip file?
Thanks
Ian
Just zip them (I typically use 7zip) and change the trailing .zip to .fzpz and you should be away.
Peter
Peter
I have created the part for PIC241FJ128GA204 TQFP. I have provided this as an attachment in case others may want to use it. I used Inkscape and my first attempt did not work when tried to copy some sections and paste. It appears that you need to edit the actual components or they don’t show up in the final part.
If there is a way around this then let me know as it takes a good amount of time to edit every component of the image.
Thanks
Ian
The part looks not bad, check part is happy enough other than the there is a transform in copper1. It can likely be removed by ungrouping copper1 and regrouping it (the ungroup usually removes translates.) Schematic is strange. It is not loading the correct svg for some reason, and I don’t know where it is getting the one it is loading. Fritzing looks like this:
where the text is in the wrong place and the pins are .2 in wide instead of .1in. The svg looks correct:
there isn’t a conflicting svg in core parts so I don’t know why this is happening, I will have to poke further at it.
Peter
Peter
I actually only changed 2 files
2, I changed the FZP file ie QFN TQFP package in the XML.
I am not all that familiar with editing these file and need some help to clean it up as I am not sure how to proceed in getting an FZPZ file that I can use when requesting board manufacture.
Thanks
Ian
I’ve been distracted trying to reproduce a bug (found 2 more, not related but still not the original one) so I’ll try and figure out why schematic is wrong, it shouldn’t be.
You need the silkscreen and copper1 groups or pcb won’t be correct. A through hole part has copper1 with copper0 as a group under that, for SMD (which this is) only copper1 is needed. Removing copper1 should have removed the translates, now you need to select all the pins and group them and name that group copper1 (and all the black silkscreen lines in a group called silkscreen if you also ungrouped them.)
If you post the .fzz file for the final sketch (which will include your part as it isn’t in core) I’ll check it over. Normally the final step is in pcb view File->Export->for Production->Extended gerber. Which will ask for a directory. When you click OK it writes the gerber files which the board house then accepts to make boards. It is a good idea to use a gerber viewer (I use gerbv from the geda project, but there are lots of them) to read and display the gerber files so you are sure the gerbers reflect the real board (there are a number of gerber related bugs in Fritzing.) Then you zip up all the gerber files and send that zip file to the board house.
edit:
My original part has the same schematic problem (I’m not sure how I missed that when I tested it), but I can’t figure out why or how it is making the changes. I have verified (by changing text) that is loading the supplied schematic svg, but I can’t see anything wrong with the svg and have never seen Fritzing do this before. I’ll keep poking.
Peter