Has anyone got a video tutorial channel, the official channel only has old videos Fritzing Killer Tips - YouTube on and are not that terribly useful for people who are new to Fritzing, but are not new to Arduino and PCBs and who want to get up to speed making decent breadboard and perf-board diagrams to share with others. For example how do I use the inspector to create a rough part easily and properly, and how do I make a custom breadboard? My breadboard does not look anything like the built in ones, and i want to eventually share one. How does one start to find and integrate downloaded parts without making a mess and loosing original part sources for credits?
Exporting is explained here for example Fritzing , but not how to “share” and thus find parts? I’m sure other folk just search the boards? is that the only way?
Creating parts is described a few times over in the tutorials, so do we need to take pointers from multiple tutorials, some are official tutorials, sure, but which is best based on context? I understand that “need to find a part that is similar to my part”, that’s a rather broad undefined limitation for new starters, what is the process for finding a matching part typically? (blog fritzing org new-parts-editor-released) is a bit sparse on how to find pointers.
You don’t in general, Inspector does not make parts, only changes some parameters of existing ones. To make a new part you need to either use Parts Editor (which is only partially finished) or create a custom part. For creating custom parts these two tutorials apply to the current Fritzing versions (most of the others are for older versions pre parts editor.)
if you decide to make parts this Inkscape extension is also very valuable for making proper schematics
Making a new breadboard is fairly tricky, and parts editor can not do it. Your best bet is to post the web site of the breadboard you want and I will have a look at making one (I have made several for folks in the past which are all posted here in the forums.) Once the part exists it can be imported and used like any other part.
As well you can right click on a part in the mine parts bin and select export part which will write the part as a .fzpz file to the file system. File–>open->filename.fzpz will import the file to your mine parts bin ready for use. Sharing parts is generally done by posting them to the “parts submit” section of the forum, or by providing a pointer to your part on github or other external file storage site. Finding parts is usually via google in the form of a search for “fritzing part part-model-number” which will find any parts available on the net. Often the images section of the search is the easiest place to find a part. Parts can be added to core parts by making a pull request against fritzing-parts on github. Assuming your part passes quality control (and the above tutorials will help with that) it will be added to core parts.
The main requirement for parts editor is that the starting part have the same number of pins as the part you need. I don’t often use parts editor, but AFAIK it will not create new connectors so it needs to start from a part with the correct number of connectors. As noted in the tutorial I tend to start from a part that is close and then edit the files to create a part. This requires that you understand how a part is created and what the xml does, but that is pretty much required for successful part creation anyway.
I’ll definitely have a stab at learning to use the parts editor before I bug you to create a perfboard for me. Also now that I know how to search I can give that a try also. So much to do and so little time. As I was a programmer in a past lifetime I should be able to get my head around the XML somehow, so will have to take my time doing that first. I now have a playlist of YouTubes to watch
This has gone so well, I am going to make diagrams for the Raspberry pi hats I have made as well next weekend!
