Fritzing is somewhat hard to use

OK, I just tried to duplicate a KiCAD project I put together recently. Creating the schematic and breadboard views were not too hard. The UI does need some serious work, partitularly when disambiguating what a mouse click refers to (one needs to be overly precise when drawing wires in the schematic view – there is ambigiousness between moving parts and drawing wires).
The PCB design view is a total disaster. The circuit I designed uses three I2C breakouts from Adafruit connected to a TTGO-T1 (an ESP32 Devkit clone, available from China for $5/each). There are exactly 4 nets: SDA, SCL, +3v3, and GND. My KiCad design uses copper fill areas for the power and ground busses: the top layer for +3v3 and the bottom layer for GND. There are really only two “routed” nets: SDA and SCL. It was an excessive amout of effort to get those two runs done. Then I discovered that it does not appear to possible to do a copper fill area for power on one side (top) and a ground fill area for the other side (bottom). At that point I gave up. I have designed far more complex boards with KiCAD – Fritzing is far harder to use than KiCAD. The only thing Fritzing brings to the table is the Breadboard view. (And the fact that Adafruit has a zillion parts as Fritzing objects, but I think I will write a Tcl/Tk program to convert Fritzing fxpz files to KiCAD .lib (schematic) and .mod (footprint) files.

My approach would be to only use Fritzing to produce those breadboard images for use in tutorials. I would never consider using it to produce board designs.

I’m going to confess to using Fritzing for producing PCB’s and I get on with it very well .
I only use it for laying out boards and don’t bother trying to go from a schematic to a board .
I’m sure they may be better options but I started out with this and can’t motivate myself to change !

I have done some separate schematics on it , but not tried to combine .
Never used the breadboard view , seems pointless !

There I’ve said it , it feels great to come out at last .

Shame shame :grin:


Has anyone used EasyEDA .

I have never understood the popularity of fritzing. IMO anyone who doesn't know how to read a standard schematic needs to learn -- it ain't that difficult! Also IMO, fritzing diagrams do not promote understanding of the circuit operation the way a schematic does. There is admittedly a bit of a learning curve for using schematic software -- if that is a problem then use a pencil and graph paper. I did it this way for decades and it served just fine...
S.

Folks have posted EasyEDA schematics in the forum. It is rare to see a Fritzing schematic.

I use the free Eagle software from Autocad to make schematics, and then I layout my board using autoroute, then make the files for PcbWay to make to boards. Sure there's a learning curve, but there's a lot of Eagle users on this forum to help.

PcbWay also offers parts placement for SMD devices, but I haven't ventured into the SMD world yet. (Anyone here done SMD with PcbWay yet?)

I personally don't see how one can layout a board without a schematic to start with.
Why not use a tool that ties your schematic symbols to the board symbols, then everything is tied together?
Eagle creates the footprints as you create the schematic, so everything on the schematic will be on the board. You just have to place them smartly, and add Gnd planes.
If you define Net classes, the autorouter will even make the trace widths the correct sizes.

In the old days when we laid out PCB with tape on plastic sheet there was no auto routing , so schematics started as rough sketches - when it worked , you’d draw it up !

hammy:
In the old days when we laid out PCB with tape on plastic sheet there was no auto routing , so schematics started as rough sketches - when it worked , you’d draw it up !

Rubylith tape- when engineers were engineers.

hammy:
In the old days when we laid out PCB with tape on plastic sheet there was no auto routing , so schematics started as rough sketches - when it worked , you’d draw it up !

My very first boards were drawn on a copper clad board with a "resist pen" which was similar to a "Sharpie," except that it should have been called a "bluntie." It was not good for much, and IC pads were impossible.
S.

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