Hello everyone!
Today you get your hands on version 0.9.6. We have tested it on
macOS Catalina and Big Sur, Windows 10 64 bit, and Ubuntu 20.04!
Installers
Both Microsoft and Apple have raised the bar on how to execute some code on your computer. They check the developer’s ID and warn or simply reject any program with mysterious origins. This was no issue in the past, but as regulations became stricter, more and more users had to jump quite high to get Fritzing running. We got all the certificates required and packaged and signed Fritzing 0.9.6 for a smooth setup.
Fixes
This is a maintenance release. We have fixed at least ten crashes, several critical bugs,
and about 30-100 regular bugs, depending on how you count. Approximately 300 issues have been closed since the last release 0.9.4.
Some of the fixes are:
Ground fill is connected only to the lower side #2186
The routing status algorithm needs to handle the part to part connections (LED in
an Arduino for example). Fixes #2685
Export to PNG does not update until restart#3073
Fill image with the background before exporting, fixes #3261
crash when both, bus and subpart in the same part #3329
Override system color for notes. Fixes #3530
Gerber rendering moves and skips nodes in board outline #3537
Crash when editing connector highlight colors #3566
No ‘routing complete’ message when no wires used to connect parts #3579
Override system color for parts bin list #3600
Two parts connected via breadboard don’t route #3616
font-size px is the same as user coordinates and can be ignored #3619
design rules check not seeing all of the copper for specific part #3647
If the property is empty, take the default one. Fixes #3648
White note text #3657
Dashed line is gone in breadboard view after moving element #3683
Gerber export missing and moving some custom PCB cutouts #3686
A typo in german translation #3694
Finish pending move operation before deleting an item. Fixes issue #3697
Ignore breadboard and schema wires when setting PCB layer count #3699
Deselect all items before exporting an image to PNG or JPG. Fixes #3712
Export PNG without selection rectangles #3712
2.2mF capacitor #3713
Fritzing 0.9.4 crashes on macOS Catalina 10.15.7 #3747
Export as image, toggled layers not honored #3771
Fix the number of allowed digits within the resistor regex
Fix bug that prevented trace width for autorouter to be remembered
Fix SVG path element parse and matching of extra graphics to PCB connector pad
Fix broken duplicated network calls
Fix nullptr dereference
Workaround: show a white icon instead of nullptr crash
Fix crash when SVG file was not found
Features
It is now possible to store multiple parts in one fzpz (Fritzing part package). This will make it more convenient
to handle and share a group of parts. Older versions of Fritzing should show an error message and only
load the first part in the file. So it will take a while until this feature becomes fully usable.
New parts
The majority of new parts have been created in the forum and can be found there.
However, besides fixing issues with some parts, we also integrated a few to the
core library.
Raspberry PI 4B
Kameleon STM32F board
Voltage regulators
Heltec Wifi Lora 32 V2
HiFive1
More predefined capacitors
Updated software stacks
We updated to a newer version of C++ and Qt5 libraries. On Mac, we use the 5.15.2 release of Qt; on Windows 5.12.10; on Ubuntu, we use the one that comes with Ubuntu 20.04. Increasing the C++ version to C++14 enabled some cleanups in the codebase, which will benefit Frirtzing in the long term. This sounds like an internal thing, not important to users. But by bumping up to the latest libraries, we have fixed countless quirks and were able to discover and fix some severe bugs.
Updated translations
The following translations have received some care
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Ukrainian
What happened to 0.9.5?
We had a development build named 0.9.5d around for a while, although we never published an official release. To avoid mixups, we skip 0.9.5 and proceed with 0.9.6.
Big thanks to developers
Joshua Scoggins, H. Phil Duby, and A. Faina!
Head to the downloads section, and we hope you will enjoy using it!
End of 2019, we crafted a maintenance release of Fritzing, version 0.9.4.
There was no announcement on this blog, as things were quite in movement.
So, as we add it, the following is old news.
Version 0.9.4 is a maintenance release. There are few new features, but we
fixed some of the bugs.
Critical bug fix for autorouter
Fixed a memory corruption that would cause random crashes.
Thanks to Filipp Mikoian for your help.
Color-coded wires
A new option was added to colorize wires according to their length automatically.
Transport Layer Security
Long overdue, Fritzing now uses transport layer security for all links. This will
mostly affect the part updates, since parts are hosted at github, and they will not allow unsecured access for much longer. For some time, the Fritzing website continues to allow HTTP for older versions of the Fritzing application. This way, update checks, and the projects gallery will continue to work.
Fix a bug where Fritzing would potentially search the whole disk for parts
Depending on installation location, Fritzing might try to search many subfolders
for its parts. Depending on the machine's speed and directory structure, this would
take a long time, during which Fritzing would show "Application does not respond" or
similar. The workaround was to wait about ten minutes until it finishes, as it only happens on the first start. This annoyed many users, our apologies, this behavior should be fixed now.
No 32 bit builds
We don't provide 32 bit builds of Fritzing anymore. It might still be
possible to build for 32 bit.
Under the hood
We dropped Qt4 support
Continuous builds for Linux, MacOS, and Windows. This means faster
release cycles in the future.
Use libgit 0.28.1
New/updated Translations
Russian thanks to Alexey Loginov
Indonesian, thanks to Rizqy H
Slovak, thanks to jose1711
Slovenian, thanks to Filip Stamcar
German
French
Bulgarian, thanks to Lyubomir Vasilev
Thanks to Chris Mayo, Peter Van Epp, Ben Williams, Michael Anderson, and Roman Vekshin. Thanks to the guys at Aisler.net, without whom this release would not have been possible.
Your trusty PCB production service is taking a big step! Effective today, Fab is powered by AISLER, a smart and affordable electronics manufacturing service.Yes, Fab has always been that, but with the support of our new partner, this will improve on all levels:
Smart: Fab now automatically renders high-res previews of your Fritzing files, so it’s much easier to check for mistakes. Plus it acts as a repository for your projects, enabling you to revise and share.
Affordable: The prices per cm2 are radically lowered, the checking fee is gone, shipping is free from 30€ – and you will get 3 copies per default. (Example: 1 Arduino Shield with the old Fab used to cost 42€ when ordering from Germany, now it’s 31€ and you’ll get 3!)
Manufacturing: The PCB is of even higher quality (three times as precise and with gold contacts) and still proudly made in Germany. Very soon you’ll be able to order parts alongside the PCB, and more services are on the roadmap.
The guys at AISLER made this an easy choice for us. Not only do they offer these excellent specs, but they also share the same friendly maker attitude all the while putting quality first. They are also based in Germany, in the up and coming Euregio area at the Dutch border.And they’re on a mission to build the production service we always wanted: The PCB is only the first step, next is parts, and eventually you’ll be able to order full projects - even assembled if you like. The ultimate goal is to create a maker market where you will get a share when somebody else produces your designs. A live preview of your board (Thanks to NITOS for providing these beautiful board designs)
With every change one has to say goodbye to a couple of things one has come to love. The black on white design will be replaced by the more standard white on green (aka “professional looks”). We made sure it’s beyond what you get elsewhere, with matte green finish and golden pads! Give it a spin at fab.fritzing.org – we hope you’ll enjoy the new service!
Finally, here's a fresh release of fritzing, coming with a nice set of new features. Head on over to fritzing.org/download to grab it.
Here's what's new:
Continuously updated parts library
The fritzing parts library is now stored online at github and is automatically checked
for updates on every launch. This means you will now get new parts (or fixes) in the moment when they are created. No need to wait for the next Fritzing release to get new parts anymore!
And we are actually using git itself inside of fritzing to do these updates, so this opens up many other use cases in the future, like for example direct user contributions.
Fritzing now looks properly on High-DPI (aka Retina) displays on all platforms. It's not really high-res but scaling nicely according to the higher screen resolution. No more eye squinting with your fancy 4K screen!
Easier handling of self-created parts
Custom / self-made parts and bins used to be stored in a hidden location on your hard
drive, which made it really annoying to edit them with an external tool such as Illustrator
or a text editor.
They are now conveniently located in your ~/Documents/Fritzing folder for easy access!
Load/Save uncompressed fritzing files (.fz)
You can now alternatively save your fritzing sketches as an uncompressed set of files (.fz
plus additional custom parts etc). This allows for proper versioning with systems like git or svn. For regular use, we still recommend using the standard .fzz format, which by the way is just a zip bundle of these files.
Thanks to Sergio Oller (zeehio) for this contribution!
File type associations & icons
fzz, fzb, fzp, etc. now also have shiny file icons on Mac OS X (thanks to scribblemaniac)
and Ubuntu Linux (thanks to el-j). To get them to actually show up, you will need to wait a little on Mac for them to override the cache, and on Linux you have to run the install-fritzing.sh script.
New Parts
Loads of new parts, many of them contributed, and all revised by Fabian Althaus (el-j):
Lots of new SparkFun parts, thanks to support from SparkFun:
OMRON G5LE and NVF4-2 relays, thanks to tomaskovacik
MPX2010 pressure sensor, thanks to Knutse
MPX4250AP pressure sensor, thanks to Old Grey
174917 DENSO ECU-socket, thanks to Old Grey
Rotary Switch 12 position 1 pole, thanks to Old Grey
4060 counter/divider, thanks to neutmute
LM124-324 Quad Opamp, thanks to Knutse
Hi-Link HLK-PM01 power module, thanks to inahas
LTC3105 step-up DC/DC converter
Refined ruler design, thanks to duff2013
New/updated Translations
Czech, thanks to Vasekdvor
German, thanks to Atalanttore and aknoerig
Italian, thanks to Gianpaolo Macario
Polish, thanks to jacekjaros
Portuguese, thanks to Bruno Ramalhete
Spanish, thanks to bazza
Turkish, thanks to Kaan Özdinçer
Vietnamese, thanks to Duyệt Đinh Xuân
..and various smaller improvements and fixes, including contributions from Duane Johnson, Luke Benstead, Nicolas Raynaud, scribblemaniac and duff2013. Thanks!
There are a zillion books that make use of Fritzing to illustrate circuits, but this one is the first on fritzing itself. We're honored that the one and only Simon Monk, author of many a maker book, took it up and created the ultimate guide for using fritzing to "take your electronics project from prototype to product." We provided technical review for the book, so you can be sure it's using all the tricks.
It does a really great job at giving a quickstart introduction. Then it walks you through each of Breadboard/Schematic/PCB view in detail, and also gives you background tips on approaching electronics projects in general, reading datasheets, etc. The second half of the book focuses on PCB design and production all the way to testing and distribution. It's all very thorough and keeps a great balance between bird's eye and detail discussion.
So it's not just a software reference, but a really practical handbook on creating prototypes and using Fritzing as the central tool for that. All in all, "Fritzing for Inventors" might be a great holiday read.
Here's the full table of contents (the one on the publisher's website seems to be from a draft version):
