Re: gEDA-user: fritzing
Hi gEDAns, I'm one of the developers of Fritzing. I know I'm coming to this thread rather late but I have a few comments and clarifications... First, I think some of the initial debate and criticism was based on looking at our old (archive.fritzing.org) web site that had a bunch of early stuff that is completely obsolete. This first proof-of-concept version of Fritzing was written using Java on top of multiple Eclipse frameworks and for expediency we hacked up a quick output to Eagle. While the demo was cool, it quickly turned into an unpleasant experience for coders as we reached the limitations of the GUI framework (not to mention the problems of being dependent on proprietary CAD tools). So, last summer we threw all the old code out and started over from scratch. We decided to go with Qt for aesthetic as well as technical reasons. For us, it makes coding C++ almost as easy as working in a higher level language, while still giving us every increment of speed that we want. It has support for 90% of what we need without external libs. Docs are great. It's very portable; we release on 4 platforms with just a few ifdefs. We looked at easily a dozen different GUI frameworks before chosing Qt. We don't really see Fritzing as competing with the other open source/free EDA tools. Our target audience is largely hobbyists, students, designers and artists: essentially, non-engineers. Our long-term goal is to support file interchange with other EDAs, especially gEDA and KiCAD so that as users reach the limits of what is possible with Fritzing, they can move their project over to more professional tools. With that in mind, it would be great to collaborate. I'm currently working on a gEDA/PCB footprint importer to take advantage of the great library that you guys have. I also have export to gEDA on my list as it would be really great to be able to export a netlist that gnetlist can understand. Please feel free drop in on our forums to give us comments, critique and code. Although we don't use gEDA as a backend, I've learned an awful lot by reading your code, docs and discussions. It's great stuff! Brendan Howell http://fritzing.org ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: Greetings from Fritzing
Hello gEDAns, I am one of the developers of Fritzing, a simple FLOSS EDA made for less technical (non-engineer) users. Our project is young but we have been posting frequent releases since November. I am also a gEDA user since 2005. I want to thank all the developers for producing such a powerful piece of software. Quite a few ideas (but no code) in Fritzing were based on your designs. Introductions aside, I was hoping to start a dialogue between our groups. We see our project as fitting into the EDA world in a different space from gEDA. Most of our target audience have limited experience with electronics and are interested in realizing small, low-complexity prototypes. However, as our software is limited (intentionally) in scope, some users may reach a stage where they need the more advanced EDA features of a package like gEDA. Right now, I'm working on a gEDA-PCB footprint import component that converts gEDA footprint files to our internal SVG based files. In the long term we would be interested in supporting some sort of export path so that users can export Fritzing projects and continue working on them in gEDA. Feel free to try out our latest builds, give us feedback, tips, gripes, etc. And we are totally open to any kind of collaboration. http://fritzing.org best, Brendan Howell ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: geda-user Digest, Vol 32, Issue 92
On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 11:26 -0500, geda-user-requ...@moria.seul.org wrote: I am one of the developers of Fritzing, a simple FLOSS EDA made for less technical (non-engineer) users. Our project is young but we have been posting frequent releases since November. Yeah, we're aware of the project. I pestered you guys about a year ago to get invovled with gEDA. Welcome, and congratulations on getting Fritzing off the ground! There was an initial version of Fritzing made with Java/Eclipse that ended up being more of a proof-of-concept. We threw out most of the code and started over this summer with Qt/C++ and we are much much happier and making much better progress. Introductions aside, I was hoping to start a dialogue between our groups. We see our project as fitting into the EDA world in a different space from gEDA. Most of our target audience have limited experience with electronics and are interested in realizing small, low-complexity prototypes. However, as our software is limited (intentionally) in scope, some users may reach a stage where they need the more advanced EDA features of a package like gEDA. Yeah, the protoboard paradigm for doing a design is very different from the traditional PCB design flow (which is one thing gEDA tries to do). It's an interesting approach for electronics newbies Reading your bulletin board, I see many people who like the interface a lot. Getting a user interface to be natural and intuitive is very difficult! (Particularly in an open-source project) Yeah it is tough. We are supported by the Interaction Design department at the FH-Potsdam so usability is a major focus for us. One thing. Fritzing's close tie-in with Eagle is, um, out of tune for an open-source/open-hardware project IMO. But that's not my decision to make, and we're happy to see you guys are contacting us (a real open-source EDA project). I agree with you. Since our summer restart, we have ditched all the dependencies on Eagle and now have our own simple but functional PCB view. We may eventually support an export to Eagle option but our core goal is a fully FLOSS production process. Right now, I'm working on a gEDA-PCB footprint import component that converts gEDA footprint files to our internal SVG based files. In the long term we would be interested in supporting some sort of export path so that users can export Fritzing projects and continue working on them in gEDA. Very cool! Being able to convert gEDA/PCB footprints - Fritzing footprints (both ways) would be very nice. A big win would be that one could use any SVG drawing program to create the footprints, and then convert to a gEDA/PCB .fp file. The question here is: What is the structure of a Fritzing footprint? That is, a footprint assumes a certain layer structure. For example, a through-hole footprint assumes you have top silk, top mask, paste and metal, some clearance structure for inner layers, and then bottom silk, mask, paste, and metal. Also, one might also want to provide a keepout layer and also other layers which I have probably forgotten. So... Is the footprint structure documented anywhere? (I admit I haven't looked.) Docs... heh. Who has time for docs? Actually, I should work on that. If you guys are interested, then I will try to put something on our web site explaining the SVG formatting. Basically, all the paths for each layer are stuck in a group which is tagged with the id for that layer. At the moment we only support single sided boards but we will need to add the bits on the back of the board at some point as well. best, -Brendan ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
