Fritzing is a popular Breadboard drawing program and as an open-source project has built up a significant parts library of popular electronic components contributed by the Fritzing community.
Keep in mind that while you can import Fritzing parts and use them in Virtual Breadboard they are just pictures. Same as they are in Fritzing. They don't virtualize but they can still be useful for documentation and co-emulation projects.Getting Fritzing Parts
The Fritzing parts need to be downloaded seperately. The standard component exchange format for fritzing is the .fzpz file.
VBB Supports the fritzing .fzpz component formatPlacing Parts
Fritzing parts are placed using drag and drop.
To place a Fritzing component drag and drop the .fzpz file
Fritzing Parts are viewed in a VBB Fritzing container component which has 3 properties:
Layout
Fritzing parts support 3 views, breadboard, schematic and pcb. VBB supports the first two and the layout property determines if the breadboard or schematic view is rendered.
TIP: Toggle between schematic/breadboard view with 'S' Shortcut key
ID
The ID component identifies component. If two components share the same ID and the same number of pins they are merged to a single entity creating an implicit netlist between the two components. This allows, for example, the breadboard layout of a component to be wired into a circuit by the schematic layout of a component in the same breadboard.
netlist
The netlist is a comma separated list of named nets that map to the pin numbers of the part. This creates an explicit netlist between two components
For example for two components with netlist = 1,2,3,4,5,6,...,20 will have virtual nets linking their pins.
As the wide use of Fritzing shows visual layout of parts and wiring is useful in it's own right for circuit documentation.
But even when trying to virtualize a circuit not every element of a project always needs to be active to be useful. A simple IO element can often substitute for a complex circuit.
For example a switch can be the final output of an internet connected module. With Fritzing parts you can layout the internet connection module in detail and place just the virtual breadboard switch to model it's functionality.
Co-EmulationFritzing treats schematic and breadboard layouts as separate entities. VBB encourages both to be used in the same Design Sheet.
Co-Emulation is where you use a schematic to define the connectivity but the breadboard model to handle the virtualization. A simple example of this is shown in the Virtual Breadboard schematic training module.
VBB Model wired with Fritzing Schematic
Some but not all VBB components have alternate schematics. You can use a Fritzing schematic to wire up the Breadboard component when the schematic is missing or when you want to work with a different schematic for the same functionality. Wiring can be implicit where the ID and pins match. Or explicit using the netlist property with matching named pins.
The FunctionBlock component has useful logic scripting capabilities for many basic logic expressions. Marking up Fritzing schematics with FunctionBlocks using a shared named netlist can be an effective way of modelling custom active circuit blocks in an understandable way.
Using Fritzing parts with VBB expands the functionality of VBB in many interesting ways from basic documentation to co-emulation markup.
Future projects will expand on these Fritzing enabled capabilities and this project will be updated with links to the related projects.
[NOTE: Some of the Screenshots require Update 1.1.28 or later which is in certification now 5/5/2019]
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