I tried to use fritzing for the first time today, and it was really really easy to start up on and make something in. But is the exports from it useable?
By useable I mean, can they be used if I wanted to order a pcb from like batchpcb.com? Or do I have to learn how to use eagle for that? (already tried eagle and seemed to be a lot harder to use)
Eagle is really worth learning it. I conceived it as hard as well. But once I figured it out I regreted that I did not take the time to learn this earlier. Everyone seems to be using Eagle. Once you get it you understand why. I finally got it by working through two tutorials and then trying to route my own PCB. Best idea I had: I did NOT take the auto router 
The whole thing starts to get more clear once you manage to create your own library parts.
Udo
I personally think Fritzing has the potential to become something much larger than what it is. From what I understand, it will output standard Gerber files, so in theory if the board maker will accept that format, it should work.
With that said, I have decided that when I get around to doing a real PCB and learning this stuff, I do not plan on using Fritzing. I also don't plan on using Eagle, simply because I don't want to be limited by size or board layers (and I can't afford the more expensive versions; plus I want to do commercial stuff).
Instead - I plan on using and learning the gEDA suite of tools and/or kicad (and others). While I know the learning curve is anything but shallow (from what I have played with - admittedly only gschem - and from what I have seen online - gEDA's learning curve makes Eagle's look "easy"), I feel that ultimately it will be worth the struggle.
I like the autorouter, it's SOOO convenient for smallish boards :(.
What's wrong with using autorouter? :\
Fritzing in my opinion is awful. I just can't get the interface to work properly. Maybe it's just my computer, but I still don't use it.
Eagle has a really steep learning curve, but it was totally worth it. My first pcb was a pretty complex one, (my 8*16 rg led matrix display board with 6 595s and two uln2803s) and the only error was a stupid mistake and a product of laziness, I was too lazy to download an led matrix library, so I used two sets of female headers, but I swapped the top and bottom sets of headers! No huge problem, I just had to swap the nybbles of the byte for the shift register. Also, I used the autorouter, which I really thought was the best option for my purposes.
Go for Eagle, I would say!
@TchnclFl: my impression is that most of the work is proper placement of the parts. Once this is done the rest is comparatively simple. Even then the autorouter just does not seem to get it. Maybe I do not fully understand how to tweak it but for my boards it always creates poor layout. Obviously the autorouter just can not know that some signals should be closer together, other may need wider traces and so on.
Udo
One more point in favour of Eagle: for Eagle you find lots of parts libraries. I doubt that Fritzing offers a similar set of content.
I doubt that Fritzing offers a similar set of content.
Not quite as much, from what I have seen, but its open source with an open format; it is fairly easy to create your own parts (at least from what I gathered from my brief investigation of it); the parts are defined in XML files, IIRC - with SVG for the actual part schematic design and PCB footprints, and a bitmap for the representative part for the breadboard view.
Its that part that I think is awesome, if they could just fix everything else (and if people would quit kvetching about the lack of parts and design more for the project - like other open source projects) - I just love the way you can go from a breadboard design (with parts that look like the parts on your breadboard), to a schematic, to a PCB - with the netlist following.
Heck, if it were possible to break off that one piece and add it to gEDA...
As I said before - I think it has potential. There's also a good chance it won't go anywhere. People love the fact that Eagle has all these parts, but no one seems to care about the fact of Eagle's cost, or the fact that it is closed source (should EagleSoft ever go out of business - what then? - hopefully someone else will buy the software, but that's no guarantee). Both gEDA and Fritzing (and kicad) are open source, just like the Arduino - yet hardly anybody uses them or thinks about them.
I find it strange, but I also suspect it has a lot to do with the Windows fan-base, too (where certain open source projects just go completely unnoticed and languish on the vine - granted, AFAIK, gEDA has not been ported to Windows)...
Even the pro versions of Eagle are pretty cheap, if you're already using it to make money. It pays for itself almost instantly. Worst case is that you have to keep using an old version of Eagle, or learn/buy a different package.
People think going open source means they aren't at the whim of a company's decisions. Yet I see open source packages getting abandoned more than commercial software. Isn't WinAVR dead at the moment?
Having the source to gEDA would mean nothing to me. I only have time to design PCBs, not write and maintain the software to design PCBs.
Even the pro versions of Eagle are pretty cheap, if you're already using it to make money. It pays for itself almost instantly. Worst case is that you have to keep using an old version of Eagle, or learn/buy a different package.
EagleCAD - Lite version is $50.00 (rounding here); Standard version (single user, all bells and whistles) - $750.00; Pro version (single user, all bells and whistles) - $1500.00.
gEDA - FREE
Maybe EagleCAD is worth it, but I would still have to spend money to do commercial development with it at the same level as the "free" version ($50.00 - the lite version seems the same as the free version, just a license to allow for commercial use); if I wanted to go further, I would have to spend a lot of money just to get to something similar in feature set as gEDA (if not in parts count - though there are a lot of parts for gEDA as well, and it is fairly easy to create your own).
That doesn't count the Windows license "fees", either...
[edit]Ahem - I forgot there were other platforms available - but I wonder if the Linux version works on a 64-bit distro; or non-x86 PC hardware...? Or what if I were running BSD, or Solaris, or...?[/edit]
If you are starting up a company, your choice with Eagle is to continue developing small boards (which, I will admit, is an option, and with SMT, you can fit a lot on a board for many good products), and spend $50.00 (a small sum) - or take the plunge and spend a whole lot that you might not recover.
Then again, I am also cheap - I would rather spend as close to nothing as I could get...
People think going open source means they aren't at the whim of a company's decisions. Yet I see open source packages getting abandoned more than commercial software. Isn't WinAVR dead at the moment?
Its an up-n-down thing; certain packages get pushed, others stagnate - but always, the source is generally out there somewhere, and if someone loves it and wants it enough, they are usually welcome to pick up the ball and run with it (can't do that with closed source, no matter how much you want to - and there have been closed packages and software in the past that I dearly wished I could have done so).
I have never once regretted my decision to step away from Microsoft's offerings; it wasn't really costs that drove me away, either (not that I enjoyed paying the humongous amounts for Visual Studio each release!) - ultimately, it was their anti-competitive practices in the late-1990s that finally drove me away.
Having the source to gEDA would mean nothing to me. I only have time to design PCBs, not write and maintain the software to design PCBs.
I can certainly appreciate that - but there are plenty of people out there who want (and do) work on both ends; otherwise, gEDA wouldn't exist. I also don't think gEDA is going anyplace; from what I understand, as a system it is fairly robust and widely used, and can accomodate some very, very complex designs (including stuff I'll never understand or likely need, like VLSI design and such).
The open source nature of the Arduino is what ultimately drew me toward it, though I don't really remember how I found it - I just remember that I was hosed by the "closed-source" Parallax Basic Stamp 2 when I switch from a 32-bit distro to a 64-bit distro, and their byte-code compiler was statically linked (!) against certain libraries under Linux, making it impossible to do anything to get it to run on 64 bit distros. Furthermore, they didn't have the source code to the software, and didn't know where the original programmer went!
Goodbye and good day to them; just another example of closed-source hosing me...
If you want to eventually learn to use gEDA for hobby use you can by all means. I'm just providing an opinion as someone who has been designing PCBs using Eagle for a number of years. Right now my rough count of PCBs of various designs produced and sold is about 25,000. Not exactly Sony but enough to have a pretty good idea what works when trying to get an electronics company off the ground. I learned Eagle using the free version years before actually starting a company, and then when I bought the pro version it paid for itself with the first design.
I did try gEDA, and Orcad, and PADS, and Pulsonix, and Autotrax, and Diptrace, and several others. Right now Eagle has the best balance of features and cost for me.
You cannot realistically start a business while being worried about a $1000 investment into a production tool that indisputably has value. Starting up the business we both had to put in $10,000 each that we didn't necessarily have to spare and could reasonably expect never to see again. Risk is always there. One time on another forum I saw someone ask if it was OK to make people pay for a kit product before he even produced and shipped them, afraid to invest any of his own money. That is the mindset destined to throw in the towel on a startup before it even has a chance.
I really don't want to point fingers because you have valid points on a philosophical perspective, and companies like EMSL do use gEDA, but by your own admission earlier in the thread you haven't even designed any PCBs yet. I highly recommend just trying a few packages, make the same design in each.
BACK to the question no one really awnsered
yes it is propitiatory, no most houses wont deal with it, but fritzing has their own fab services (starting in march)
which is not unusual, there are plenty of fab houses that will accept normal stuff, but provide you with a tool for their production
If you want to eventually learn to use gEDA for hobby use you can by all means. I'm just providing an opinion as someone who has been designing PCBs using Eagle for a number of years. Right now my rough count of PCBs of various designs produced and sold is about 25,000. Not exactly Sony but enough to have a pretty good idea what works when trying to get an electronics company off the ground. I learned Eagle using the free version years before actually starting a company, and then when I bought the pro version it paid for itself with the first design.
At that count, I suppose it would!
I did try gEDA, and Orcad, and PADS, and Pulsonix, and Autotrax, and Diptrace, and several others. Right now Eagle has the best balance of features and cost for me.
Haven't heard of some of those others - do any of them work under Linux? Do they offer trial versions?
You cannot realistically start a business while being worried about a $1000 investment into a production tool that indisputably has value.
For me, right now, I can't justify it mainly because I don't know how to use it, nor how it compares with gEDA (or anything else); I'm in the very beginnings of planning a business - there probably won't be any need immediately for any kind of schematic or PCB capture - but maybe later on if the business works out...
Starting up the business we both had to put in $10,000 each that we didn't necessarily have to spare and could reasonably expect never to see again. Risk is always there.
Hopefully with the business I am working on starting (will be sending out the forms to secure the tradenames tommorow - still working on my business plan, but I do have my domains), I won't have to invest any huge amount, but I am hoping to see a greater return on what I have "invested", which isn't really much. I am not currently looking for this business to replace my job, but more for it to be a learning experience, and if it doesn't turn a profit - then I haven't lost much, and probably gained more in knowledge. With that, I can't plunk down a lot of cash for much; but as I said, I don't expect to need custom PCB designs or such immediately...
One time on another forum I saw someone ask if it was OK to make people pay for a kit product before he even produced and shipped them, afraid to invest any of his own money. That is the mindset destined to throw in the towel on a startup before it even has a chance.
I am attempting to start my business as cheaply as possible; if I can make $200.00 a month off of it, I will be happy - I am just hoping it doesn't turn wildly successful overnight - that could possibly sink it. Fortunately, the product that forms the "raw material" to sell for the business should be relatively easy to get (with a bit of work)...
I really don't want to point fingers because you have valid points on a philosophical perspective, and companies like EMSL do use gEDA, but by your own admission earlier in the thread you haven't even designed any PCBs yet. I highly recommend just trying a few packages, make the same design in each.
As long as the package works in Linux, I am game for it; I appreciate your advice as always...
yes it is propitiatory, no most houses wont deal with it, but fritzing has their own fab services (starting in march)
Hmm - like I said before, I haven't played with it much, but I was pretty sure that Fritzing would supposedly dump to Gerber? Maybe it is another one of those options on the menu that is there, but doesn't really work (I don't know why they do that!)...
From Fritzing's fab page:
Sorry, the Fritzing Fab service has not yet started. We've had a couple of successful test runs and are currently polishing the details. We intend to launch the service in March 2010!
Checks calendar
You can also export your sketch to Gerber files, and send them to a professional PCB manufacturing service.
I use eagle currently (with freerouting, because the autorouter is a moron), but I have been looking at learning fritzing, being open source is a big plus to me.
Hi everyone, and thanks for checking out Fritzing!
To answer the main question: Yes, it's useable for PCBs. It has a standard Gerber export that has been tested and works, so you can send it to any board house. It also has a convenient export for diy etching.
Also, it's open-source and runs on all platforms.
And yes, we are also still working to get the fab service off the ground. March 2010 has indeed passed, the current goal is to start it in November. It will hopefully be easier and cheaper than any other batch production service.
For choosing a tool, I'd say it depends on the level of complexity that you're trying to achieve. Fritzing is still more of a beginner's tool. If that's what you are, it's certainly a good choice! Even if you end up switching to a pro tool it will help you to get started.
We are putting in a lot of effort to deal with more complex circuits. For example, we are working on an SMD library, better ratsnest visualisation and a new autorouter.
If there are things that you are missing in Fritzing, please let us know and we'll try to squeeze it into the roadmap!
@sciguy: What exactly is awful with the interface? Can you send us a screenshot?
Cheers,
André (from the Fritzing team)
oooh can't wait for the fab to work, and see the prices.
Tried eagle again, but went back to fritzing again... I love the way it is... just like building with lego
Maybe I could get a more professional result with eagle, but I don't do this for a living, it do it because I like electronics, and just want to have fun, and Fritzing really makes this fun