Ban Fritzing

I consider my shift register drawing a bad one. I think if you don't have ICs with many pins (say more than 8), drawing in Fritzing is not so hard and you produce a connection diagram that is easy to check against the actual circuit. Not everyone needs to know pin numbers. If I just hire someone with electrical skills to build that system with sonic rangers, I'm better off with that diagram than giving him a schematic since the electrician may no nothing about ICs. Along this line, I think some photographic like details are useful in certain places. Here's a matrix keypad I drew and integrated multitap function of my phi-panel: (please say they look nice and useful!!!)

oh I am the first one to hit inkscape to generate graphics for the front end, but your not trying to tell me how this thing is connected, your showing me the layout of the buttons and what functions they do

Just trying to justify realistic looks of electronic components. It's not a connection diagram.

but those are not components, its a graphic overlay

Those drawings look nice and useful Liudr.


Rob

Pedro147:
Tongue in check comment -

How much support do you think I might get if I start a campaign on the forum to ban all Fritzing circuit images? I think that they belong on the kindergarten wall.

If you offer the same amount of support to fritzing team to make that part of Fritzing prettier, then it may be a good idea :stuck_out_tongue: Let the "children" to have their fun! Anyway, you must admit that a great effort is required to make a nice schematic using it.

BTW, I find KiCAD electronic schematics much prettier, especially for documentations.

Here's the first Fritzing I drew:

I am adding it to the thread in protest.

Long live Frtizing!!

Mine is prettier! Anyway, the author was talking about the schematic part, which is horrible compared with any free EDA package.

sheet_breadboard-FreeJALduino by funlw65, on Flickr

I like the diagram from aarondc. It is not schematic. I consider it a "realistic rendering of an actual circuit". This fit my idea: ICs with many pins are bad because it's very hard to make out of what is going on. Otherwise (like what aarondc produced) it can be good.

liudr:
I like the diagram from aarondc. It is not schematic. I consider it a "realistic rendering of an actual circuit". This fit my idea: ICs with many pins are bad because it's very hard to make out of what is going on. Otherwise (like what aarondc produced) it can be good.

Thanks. As a very visually oriented person, I find that sort of diagram helpful. Eventually schematics will be helpful also, but there are things to learn there, whereas the real life representation is plug n play.

OK "plug-n-play rendering of an electrical circuit".

and much like building a kit you learn very little, just plop stuff here and instant genius!

I dont really have a problem with that to a point, but it makes it harder for you to reconfigure the circuit, or change its layout, and that is your loss.

still don't get the issue with reading a schematic, I was a kid when I started reading them from the simple books at radio shack, but I like to be able to read rather than point at a picture of a big mac and grunt :wink:

From a psychological point of view, you are far more likely to be motivated by the success of a working circuit, regardless of how little it costs you in terms of mental processing power, than struggling with something that does not work.

When I first started this thread, as I stated it was a “tongue in cheek” comment, which I certainly did not expect to provoke what some might term a passionate debate. At least hearing Fritzing proponents argue their case has given me a slightly more favourable view of the offending software (another tongue in cheek comment) Oh well I admit maybe it’s not as bad as I first thought, once you understand it’s full potential, and on that note, no I am not going to become a born again door to door Fritzing spokesman. I’ll stick to Tinycad and dreams of soaring like an Eagle. 8)

Show me a forum devoid of passionate response and I'll show you an Internet brimming with it :wink:

Touche. Us Aussies have to stick together XD

This calls for a classic!

image.jpg

I draw fritzing diagrams for those that need to build the circuits and do some basic trouble shooting. I send out EAGLE diagrams to wow those ones that don't know printed circuit design or want my help with PCB design :wink:

Opening a door to electronics for someone is more important than giving them the precise diagram that could turn them away. Once they're through the door, they will make their decisions to stick with the basics or advance to the next level. We don't have to always use the best tool for the pro to teach the beginners. Sometimes even some "wrong" but good-working things can be used as long as they don't pose profound impacts to the beginners. When I teach something as hard as physics, I could use all calculus, or use some algebra and diagrams and videos and else. Whatever gets students to start understanding the concept is not always the calc, although I almost certainly require that at a later stage.

So here we are again, comparing simple symbols to freaking calculus and physics, thinking it's that level of hard, its not, your replacing one set of graphical symbols for another set of graphical symbols that you rarely see outside of this community, thus at some point the user has to learn the same thing twice.

This arduino mentality of the noobie being ultra delicate is something I have never gotten used to cause its just so polar. One one hand you are dropped into a GCC environment with a lot of strict programming rules, then you have people claim that line numbers in the IDE would make it "confusing". Design and construct your own high speed digital circuitry, but dont bother learning a whole page full of basic schematic symbols, the poor little pumpkins might run away. Then there is my favorite, where a photo-realistic rats nest on a breadboard is apparently acceptable, but a real photo of a rats nest on a breadboard wont even get the time of day until a better example can be drawn up.

whatever

It's all perspective. Before I knew about arduino, physics and calc were easy but electronics were hard. I think a lot of people will find that too. They may be very good in say web programming or music but found circuit diagram intimidating. If a "realistic" diagram helps them get over the fear over electronics then the diagram is good for something.