I just found out that the included part has the mounting holes only as silkscreen prints.
How do I turn the silk screen print circles into drill holes?
I just found out that the included part has the mounting holes only as silkscreen prints.
How do I turn the silk screen print circles into drill holes?
This has at least 2 problems I encountered so far:
The size parameter simply does random weird shit when I use decimal custom sizes. Including doing nothing sometimes. (I tried . and ,) (my research suiggests I need to create a new part with a different size: Change Hole Size - #3 by spassignat)
How do I add it to a part? Could not find any way in the part editor to add anything.
You might try changing languages, I believe there is a bug in Fritzing that screws up the hole size setting (doesn’t happen in English.) Modifying parts is fairly complex. These two tutorials will tell you how.
Fritzing PART CREATION Video Tutorial Series
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.
Peter
Fritzing and operating system are in English already. I checked if Fritzing has several English settings (many things offer at least UK and US for example) but that does not seem to be the case.
Which is why I tried the . first only when that did not work did I make attempt with ,
Because I had run out of good ideas. I then tried full numbers that seems to work it just for some reason refuses decimals. But I guess in my case making the hole too big at least to that degree would be fine.
So how do I add it to a part?
Also the part editor is unable to go back to the original alignment after anything was moved. even ctrl + z does not work according to the symbols on screen.
Is there no way to to change the file in such a way that the circle is defined as a drill hole? The size seems to be right. It just for some reason is not a hole.
“Cherry MX Keyswitch”
As far as I can tell it is stock included and I could not find the file to download anywhere.
What version of Fritzing are you using? On Fritzing 1.0.4 (the latest version) on Win10 it works fine for me. As I said there is or was a problem in another language which may have been fixed in 1.0.4 but for me this has always worked from the days of 0.9.3b in 2016.
change size
That is intentional. If you don’t want the hole and it is in the part, you have to modify the part to change it. If it is only in silkscreen then the hole isn’t in the part and if you want it you can drag the hole in (modulo bugs) and add it to the sketch. So the standard way to make parts is not include mounting holes where they may not be wanted.
You need to create a new part for it which is fairly complex. The tutorials listed above provide instructions. I will note that parts editor was not (and AFAIK is not now) finished when development stopped in 2016. I believe there is a project to complete it, but it hasn’t been released yet. As a result of the limitations, I rarely use parts editor and instead edit the files directly. My method is available in my tutorial. As to getting a copy of a core part you can either find the fzp file in the parts directory and then obtain the necessary svg files from the svg section and convert the file names to fzpz format or use parts editor to export the part like this:
Search for the part then right click on it
and select edit in parts editor
save it as a new part
accept the default prefix (or set your own)
which saves it as a new part in the mine parts bin
From there right click on it and select export part
which will write the part as a fzpz file to the file system. Unzipping the .fzpz file will give you the fzp file and the 4 svg files that you need to modify. Then using an svg editor such as Inkscape you want to modify the pcb svg file to change the circle from silkscreen to a nonconn hole in the copper layers of the pcb svg then remake the part as an fzpz file. You likely want to run the part through FritzingCheckPart.py to remove the various CSS modifications that Inskcape makes but Fritzing dislikes. If you don’t do that either via FritzingCheckPart or manually with a text editor your font sizes are likely to screw up due to the added px on the font-size in the svg file.
Peter
I guess I give up for now and probably just make manual oversized holes.
[Not allowed to post screenshots I made 3 to make it obvious.]
Set it to 2000% to make the difference or lack thereof a bit more visible.
Version 0.9.6
So it’s older but after the bug. Ubuntu 22LTS
Got an idea/Update with partial workaround:
If I edit the hole size in the .fz file it works. Even when it is opened again with Fritzing. It’s something.
Which leads me to:
Is it possible to do the same with a part? I mean I literally already got all the values, it’s probably just some label or copying them to another section, right?
You could also try a google search of the form “fritzing part part-number” where part number is the switch you want. There may be parts available on the net with the mounting holes. 0.9.6 is fairly old and buggy, there are a lot of important fixes in later versions (around 1.0.3 a serious routing database bug was fixed) so you may want to consider an upgrade.
Peter
This part:
What is the Id i need to search. I obviously already tried the name for while.
OK given the fzp file you need to look for the svgs in it, which are here:
<breadboardView>
<layers image="breadboard/Cherry-MX-Keyswitch_breadboard.svg">
<layer layerId="breadboard"/>
</layers>
</breadboardView>
<schematicView>
<layers image="schematic/Cherry-MX-Keyswitch_schematic.svg">
<layer layerId="schematic"/>
</layers>
</schematicView>
<pcbView>
<layers image="pcb/Cherry-MX-Keyswitch_pcb.svg">
<layer layerId="copper1"/>
<layer layerId="silkscreen"/>
<layer layerId="copper0"/>
</layers>
</pcbView>
<iconView>
<layers image="icon/Cherry-MX-Keyswitch_icon.svg">
<layer layerId="icon"/>
</layers>
this one is pretty easy because the file names are the same. Here I am in the Fritzing parts directory in the application
core contains the .fzp files so I edited the fzp to find the svgs listed above. Now I need to move to the svg directory which is on the same level as core but in svg/core
then go for pcb
and identify and edit the pcb svg file (here using Inkscape)
You now want to move either the 2 outside circles or all three in to the copper layer and set them as id nonconnx so Fritzing knows they are drill only not pads.
swap the fill and stroke values to make a black pad with no stroke then increase the radius to get the circle back to the correct size
and set the id to nonconn0
do the same to the other circle (and the middle one if needed, I assumed it wasn’t needed and didn’t do it.)
then save the result as plain svg to produce this svg
(right click on the image and save image as to download the svg.) From there you can create a new part by using parts editor to edit the part as described and then use load image for view
to load the new svg
and save the result as a new part to create a new part with the holes drilled.
Peter
Thanks, but one question:
Can’t I just set fill and stroke to black?
That seems just easier. what is the problem with that? As I understand it that would just mean no size adjustment.
As I understand it all the black nonconn areas in the copper layer of the file are just converted to coordinates for the drill anyways. Where did I go wrong here?
Probably (because I haven’t directly tested it) What that will do is produce a copper fill with a smaller hole as Fritzing will believe this is a standard pad with a surround. In Inkscape the hole size is set by
hole_size = pad_diameter + (2 * stroke_width)
which in this case I think will produce a smaller hole than desired with a copper surround (although the nonconn may modify that but I doubt it.) Parts creation is complex.
Peter
The render of the manufacturer and fritzing just shows a hole as intended.
So I guess it works. I will update here when the boards arrive.
Boards arrived, perfect fit.