Make Beautiful Fritzing Parts with eagle2fritzing

published July 05, 2016, last updated August 05, 2016

posted in Maker Business Arduino Compatibles/ Adafruit METRO

Intermediate

Skill guide

Check and customize PCB View

Fritzing PCB SVGs are very finicky about having the components in the right groups and right group names. Don't ungroup parts, instead try to edit/enter the group to keep the part and group names the same. Breadboard and Schematic are not picky, you can ungroup without issue

We suggest working 'backwards' - getting PCB view to be exactly the way you like, then working back to the breadboard view.

Open the PCB view SVG in the FritzingTest/parts/svg/contrib/pcb

It'll look a little like:

Since the lines are in white, you will want to change the background color. Open up the Document details with Control-Shift-D

Select Background Color and change it to black

To see all the outlines:

I would like the mounting holes to appear. To do that, you'll need to edit the part parameters and re-run the tool.

Edit FritzingTest/params/part.params and find the connector that ties to the mounting holes. The holes aren't actually connectors but this is the easiest way to do it

Move those out from the <unused> XML element into a new element you have to create called something like <mnt> (it can be anything really)

Save the params file and rerun the tool. It's also good to make a backup in case!

Mounting holes will appear

Editing the silkscreen is a little more advanced and isn't covered here. Basically make sure that all the silkscreen is in a group with id=silkscreen It's best to use the XML editor, use Shift-Ctrl-X to bring it up

Once you have your PCB SVG in a good spot its a great idea to make a backup. Rerunning the brd2svg tool will OVERWRITE the file! Ideally you would not have to do any edits to the PCB file once params is set

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