If you design maker hardware - you'll find investing in Fritzing objects to be an excellent method for encouraging projects. It'll also make your documentation look really nice.
Fritzing is an open source CAD-like graphical software for all operating systems that allows full interaction between breadboard, schematic and PCB views. Customers or other enthusiasts can wire up breadboard diagrams and then turn that into a schematic and even a finished PCB!
For example, here's a demo of the part we'll be making, wired to an Arduino and buzzer in breadboard view:
And the corresponding schematic & PCB views
The idea is great but the making of those lovely objects is not easy. Here's some tutorials on how to make objects from scratch:
- Sparkfun's Make your own Fritzing Part
- Details on the Fritzing Parts Editor
- Fritzing's tutorials (some are out of date) lots of links there too!
These are all good for making custom parts but wouldn't it be really cool if we could take this:
A PCB file in EagleCAD format...and wave a magic wand to turn it into something like this?
A perfect 1:1 part, based on the CAD file?
WELL YOU CAN! (sorta)
Using the fancy eagle2fritzing project by Fritzing team and the excessive effort of PaintYourDragon who wrassled with the code and got it into a really good spot!
