This is a screen shot from the Curvy Parking Assistant example sketch that comes with Fritzing 0.6.3.

What’s new is:

• wires can be curved, or can be straight and have bendpoints, or both
• many parts--such as resistors, capacitors, LEDs, and transistors--now have rubberband legs
• rubberband legs can be curved, or can be straight and have bendpoints, or both

These features are only available in breadboard view. The rest of this post will explain how to use them.

Wires Let’s start with wires.  As before, you can drag on each end of a wire, and it will stretch along with your mouse. You can drag out a bendpoint simply by mousing down somewhere on the middle of the wire and dragging.  Or you can add a new bendpoint by double-clicking somewhere in the middle of the wire, or right-clicking to bring up the context menu, and selecting the appropriate option.  To delete a bendpoint you can double-click it, or right-click to bring up the context menu.

Adding a curve to a wire is like dragging out a new bendpoint, except that you hold the control key down (Mac: command key down).  How the curve bends depends upon where on the curve you drag it.  To be specific, these are Bézier curves, which means that the curves are influenced by four points: the two endpoints, and two “control points”.  As you drag on a curve, Fritzing will display the control points to give you a better sense of what’s happening.   The image below is an example.

There is one control point at the end of the grey line and another control point at the end of the white line.  Since you can only affect one control point at a time, the white line shows which one is active–in this case the point controlling the lower bend.  The next image is the same curve, but now after mousing up from the lower bend and mousing down again and dragging the upper bend.

By the way, if you prefer curvy wires to straight ones, you can set that as the default in Preferences.  So in that case, the normal drag behavior would produce curves, and to make a bendpoint, you would hold down the control key (Mac: command key).

Rubberband legs A rubberband leg acts a lot like a wire with only one available end.  If you have a part with rubberband legs, each leg can be manipulated independently of the others.  Just as with a wire you can:

• drag the end of the leg to connect it to a distant connector
• drag out a new bendpoint
• create a new bendpoint by double-clicking or right-clicking and choosing a context menu option
• delete a bendpoint by double-clicking or choosing a context menu option
• drag out a curve by holding down the control key (Mac: command key) as you drag

Another feature of rubberband legs is that it is possible to move the body of a part without disconnecting its legs.  For example, say you’ve dropped an LED onto a breadboard, and you want to change the position of the LED but leave it connected.  In this case, hold down the alt key (Linux: meta key) as you drag the part.  The legs will rubberband, staying attached to the breadboard as you drag the part body.

If you want to connect a rubberband leg to another part using a wire, then when you drag on the end of the leg, hold down the alt key (Linux: meta key).

That’s the rundown.

Enjoy,

– the Fritzing team

Even though it didn’t take us as long as DNF, we are aware that we were a bit optimistic with our previous announcements. But now it’s finally here: Fritzing Fab is open for business!

You can now go to fab.fritzing.org and order a PCB directly from your Fritzing sketch. (Just use your Fritzing.org account to log in.)

We hope that you are pleased with how easy the process is. No long lists of parameters – no worries. The prices are very low, too, and the more you order the cheaper it gets.

This new video should also give you a taste how quickly you can turn your breadboard sketch into a sweet custom PCB:

With the opening of Fab we have now come full circle. When you look closely at the photo above, you can see that it is the realization of the original vision sketch that you can still find on our front page. :)

Why did it take us so long? Besides some technical issues, this is a bit of a risky undertaking for an open-source project like us. Because PCB production is only efficient when producing large quantities, this will only work when enough people are ordering. As with the starter kits, all profit goes back into the further development of Fritzing.

So let’s keep the fingers crossed and give Fab a try.

Comments from the old blog:

1. isnoop #2. Aug. 2011, 19:26This is excellent! I can't wait to use it in the coming months.
2. Jürgen B #7. Aug. 2011, 20:03Hi, sorry, have i understand it right? An PCB with 100 x 160 mm will cost about 80,- Euro? I can not believe :-( I think, it will be much to expensive :-( Bey Juergen :-( https://www.loetseite.de
3. André Knörig #9. Aug. 2011, 15:37Hi Jürgen, remember that this is the price for a single, individual PCB. And even though we are really small, this is actually still cheaper than the best known pooling PCB service in Europe -- and the profit goes back into Fritzing. We'd be happy to learn how to offer an even less expensive service, while still delivering the same quality.
4. darius #7. Okt. 2011, 13:14I read in the FAQ, that you might accept Gerber or eagle files at some point if enough interest raises. Is there a specific place where I can cast my vote for this?
5. André Knörig #23. Okt. 2011, 09:54Hi Darius, You just did. :)

Introducing the new Fritzing version 0.6 (actually 0.6.2 by the time of writing). With thanks to all the people who purchased Fritzing Starter Kits, plus our donors, and SparkFun, we added several major new features:

• Support for SMD parts - You can now use those really tiny "Surface Mount" parts to make your PCB designs much smaller. In the parts inspector, you can simply change the 'package' of almost any part to 'SMD'.
• SparkFun parts library - With SparkFun's generous assistance, we were able to bring a new bin of 74 SparkFun products to Fritzing! You can find them by clicking the little folder icon under the parts bin, and then Open > SparkFun.
• Support for Stripboards - Not everyone works with breadboards, so by popular demand we added stripboards and perfboards. You can even cut and uncut strips! You can find the new boards right next to the breadboard, in our newly cleaned-up core parts bin.

We will discuss these features individually in future blog posts, but if they aren’t enough to whet your appetite, then have a look at our long list of new features, including a cleaned-up parts inspector, a document frame for schematics, text and graphics on copper, etc.

Plus we fixed a ton of bugs.

Download it here. Hope you like it!

– the Fritzing team

Comments from the old Blog

1. Bret Comnes # 27. Juli 2011, 05:39 Wow, its like EagleCAD, but usable and free. Thanks!
2. alkopop79 # 15. Aug. 2011, 13:03 It's everything I wanted: SMD and etchable mirrored export! Thanks!

Hi Ubuntu-person,

We have been building our linux binary releases on Ubuntu 8.04.4 LTS.  Is it time for us to move to 10.04 LTS instead?  Please let us know–particularly if you still prefer 8.04.4–by adding a comment to this post.

Cheers.

• j

Comments from the old Blog:

1. isnoop #1. Juni 2011, 04:22I'm all in favor for 10.04 and any other LTS as soon as the community accepts it.
2. bweber #2. Juni 2011, 03:48So far I'm running fine in 11.04. Thank you for all the work on this software!
3. jestin #10. Juni 2011, 20:21Most Ubuntu users who bother do design their own circuits are likely to be running the latest, or the second latest release (I'm still on 10.10). And by release, I mean regular releases, not necessarily the LTS release. I would recommend building on the latest, regardless of whether it's LTS or not. Thanks for the great software.
4. tmberthold #11. Juni 2011, 23:05because it is free, there is no motivation NOT to upgrade Ubuntu when a new version comes out. In fact, every new Ubuntu version seems to use less RAM and disk space, plus has newer versions of software. So I think many people will use the latest versions of Ubuntu, and I vote for moving to version 10.04. Thank you for your great software!
5. cqexbesd #13. Juni 2011, 10:10A common practice (in my limited experience), when it comes to internal support for Ubuntu in large organisations, is they support the last LTS and on a best effort basis, the most recent release, LTS or otherwise. You may have no wish to support 2 releases in which case I'd say go for the most recent LTS only. It will be easier for users on a newer release to run something build for the previous LTS than if things were reversed.
6. inizul #17. Juni 2011, 23:56I vote for moving to version 10.04 Thank you for this great software!
7. Angus Pearson #23. Juni 2011, 00:17If you must use 10.04, but 10.10 is great, although at the moment Unity and 11.04 haven't got my respect (Especially as it didn't work with my desktop cube!!!). But thanks for the great work, and go for the 10.04 LTS.
8. Entropicus #23. Juni 2011, 22:01When you install software for circuit design, most likely your interest is more in applications than in the operating system itself. As long as your applications run nicely, you wish stability in the background OS. For this kind of person, Long Term System version is best. However, I have seen more software development oriented people like the ultimate version, a never ending story about making programs to fit the new one. I balance between renew and stability, is the latest LTS. Honestly, I expected you already had a Fritzing version for 10.04, because an Ubuntu user rarely had any reason for not upgrade a LTS version (it took five years its development).
9. Chris Bristol #19. Juli 2011, 01:48I agree with the majority that an LTS version is best. I've been using 11.04LTS without any problems so would vote for that.
10. LightScape66 #20. Juli 2011, 12:14@Angus: 11.04 will also use Gnome if you configure it. I don't like Unity, too! Unity may be okay for beginners, but experienced users and those, who will use a lots of applications may prefer Gnome 2.x.
11. Jonathan Cohen #22. Juli 2011, 18:00Hi, As you probably know, the binary release for Fritzing 0.6 was built using 10.04.2 LTS. Cheers, - j

And received a box full of lovely electronic goodies instead?

One of our customers sent us this great photo of his Fritzing Starter Kit unboxing experience – we can only imagine his surprised face. :D

Seems like Deutsche Post got something mixed up here. If we had only put a Lilypad into the kit, the little girl who is now the proud owner of a Fritzing Kit would not be quite as sad…

Comments from the old Blog:

aotto2011 # 6. Juni 2011, 11:22

Thanks for the awsome and easy solution to this strange problem.