Fritzing is a fabulous tool for designing breadboard setups (I typically use Eagle for the schematic, move to a breadboard for testing, and finally create the board through Eagle.) Just two things would make Fritzing infinitely more useful for me: 1 - A true top down view of all parts. I know that this is not a design issue with Fritzing itself but of the parts used in the library. For example, the ICs, resistors and diodes work perfectly for a top down view. The e-caps, caps, transistors and regulators often lie over the board, obscuring potential wiring points. I know, I know - just draw them myself - but I battle to hold a pencil never mind draw! 2 - Currently, rotation can only be done in 90 degree increments but breadboard layout can often be much cleaner if we can rotate a component just slightly. For example, a crystal like that in the parts library can often be lined up perfectly with the two xtal pins on most microprocessors by placing it on the breadboard at an angle closer to 45 degrees rather than 0 or 90 degrees.

Otherwise, fantastic tool. Keep it up.

Regards

Steve

Hi Jonathon -

Thanks for the prompt reply. I used an unfortunate shorthand when describing the free rotation. The example I used with the crystal only really works if the angle is closer to 20 degrees than 45 degrees. So the short answer is really to have full free rotation, not constrained to an arbitrary incerement of degrees. As for the UI I would envisage grabbing the end of a component leg (perhaps with a keyboard modifier such as Alt, Shift or Ctrl) and dragging that point around until the component was angled correctly. Of course, being greedy, I still want the legs to snap to the breadboard tie-points!

As for the top-view / 3/4 view debate: Yes, there are some parts that would be less easy to recognise easily in a pure top down view (caps, e-caps, thermistors and tilt switches are the ones that spring to mind) but there are a couple of ways around that. The option I like best is to embed the schematic symbol for the component on the component so that the user gets immediate feedback as to the component selected. (Makes a great learning tool too - for many components there is little correlation between the schematic symbol and the actual component.)

The current component set is a mix of pure top-down and 3/4 views - again beign greedy I would really want a 3/4 view and a top down view for each component - that way I could toggle between a full top-down view and a 3/4 view.

The mode switch idea is a good one - we both get our cake that way, although I would prefer it to be a user configurable option.

regards

Steve

I agree, rotation would be useful.  Like when using resistors, you could use them as you would use a wire.

BTW I'm new here.

I want to seconds that. Rotation would be great.

Personally right now all i need it 45 degrees but free rotation would be even better.

Great work guys and girls.