Ill also include a snapshot of what happened to me on 0.9.4 because I missed one of my parts not being grounded. So, in this case, connecting the fill to the pin at “C” would not create a loop. the groundplane is treated as a connector with a very irregular shape on a generated I just tried 0.9.9 yesterday and it was worse than 0.9.6. these time the panelizer does the panels without a crash. Next, run the Design Rule Check and clear any errors. At this point, I got to looking around at the PCB and noticed problems with the ground fill. In schematic view, I was unable to select the capacitor. This newest version seems to have this issue the worst. it's great that you do so much to develop fritzing! You've got traces front and back on that board. Can you compile with your last commit? thank you, strange, I'll give it a look, I gave a quick look to the drill file and thought someone else had done it :). "I don't like it when it is rainy." look for the closest border point to the bendpoint rather than from the original ), I am somewhat surprised that this bug isn't gaining greater attention. @jonathanhogg The example you uploaded is straightforward to show the bug, but it doesn't show why the workaround is impractical. I have looked into this a bit further and here’s what I am seeing -. i'm not sure what is easier. I would wait to change all the examples until the ground plane issue ( #3794) is fixed. what is caroline rhea doing now / who is responsible for easement maintenance in georgia / fritzing ground plane. This would as least tell the user a GND (or any other connection for that matter) has not been made, or have been made incorrectly. Working from the image makes analysis of the nets guesswork. We breadboarded the entire circuit and copied the design over to fritzing and I worked on putting the PCB design together (shown below,) however, I had a few questions about connecting all my grounds. After this is solved, some lessons learned from implementing this could be taken to improve the autorouter. Yes, I deleted this file, I might have missed a reference, I'm re-checking for dangling references, it might take a couple hours because of the build time. So I can assure you that the issues is real, maybe less real to simple designs but for more complex and SMD designs it almost unusable. Also works with just three diodes, not related to label or ground fill seed. It can prevent creation of a ground loop. The developers may be able to fix the bugs (if they are indeed bugs) if they have an example that recreates the problem dependably. Why use ground fill on PCB? - element14 Community It’s posted somewhere on the forum. 3. I guess keeping posted when the issue is fixed and I'll try and reground what I know has caused issues in the past and we'll see what happens. There are only so many ways to ‘tag’ things. I suggest you also use clipper for DRC checks. I'm most concerned in how the GND fill works so I can connect my ICs GND together with VIAs, I would recommend against using fritzing. The top copper layer isn’t connected either. 1 atmega328+ all necessary 'equipment' here are new gerber and svg data together with the fzz. That distance was almost random in nature. There is not one single point in the code that causes this. do you have an idea how this thing happen? the drill file cannot be loaded into the gerber-viewer. Improvement to ground plane and gerber generation #3083 - GitHub I'm trying to find some other mac compatible gerber software, so that I can try to slowly debug it. Cin and Cout should be connected close to the chip and close to its ground pin. I use GerbView, which is the gerber viewer from kicad. For now, how about adding a copper plane with manually routed ground connectors? Why are mountain bike tires rated for so much lower pressure than road bikes? there appears to be a bug added between 0.9.4 and 0.9.6 in the mix too. C2 and C3 can be selected. Will this affect the PCB when I send it to Aisler for fabrication? Running 3 traces from connector to connector would be better than 1 trace, right? I used Fritzing for a few years before I had to switch. speech to text on iOS continually makes same mistake. 3 other custom parts missed getting nice ground fills connected to them. As is the Fritzing way. That sounds great. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails. starting with the submask svg. When the file is ground filled with Version 0.9.4 (CD-498-0-a1ffcea 2019-12-01) 64 [Qt 5.12.3] it will work as I had it set for production. By Posted combat engineer mos school length In franklin, tn police department salary Sounds like you have a better idea on what I was trying to explain. Set the Fritzing grid spacing to this value by going to View > Set Grid Size. If both sides are editable, the ground fill is placed on both sides. After I placed the parts and organized them on the board, run the check and then ground fill. Will look for a Gerber viewer that works in Windows. Further updates would result in this same issue. The red islands will be deleted, they aren’t worth the hassle of connecting them. You can see there are no ground connections were there is plenty of room to have them. Already on GitHub? By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and Or was this not a valid workaround for some reason? All those red connection dots need traces routed from them to ground connections on the PCB. It has limitations that you may not run into right away, but when you do hit them you will pretty much be forced to learn a new program. How do I decide on a proper PCB ground layout? (green pcb, red drill holes). Another approach, which is not entirely worked out, would be to generate the but bug number 2) seems to fixed as well. Copper fill is not connected to anything, it's just copper area that isn't removed during pcb manufacture. Sorry. There is a button in this window to generate the ground fills. Keep out areas are spots where you don’t want any ground fills and it’s best to define those in the beginning of PCB layout. Suggestions cannot be applied while viewing a subset of changes. they can have a required count or an optional count. the mouse-cursor seems to be off. After a while of playing around I found that the distance between the nearby parts and traces make a major difference. thank you very much. You should add small capacitors (typically 100nF) at the power pins to each IC. Maybe i am missing something? pcb design - Ground vias and completing a board - Electrical ... Cc: brendan.howell, From irasc...@gmail.com on September 28, 2010 23:47:40, From irasc...@gmail.com on July 13, 2011 10:27:26. 3 headers for pont. privacy statement. I'm looking for some insight into Ground Fill, extending the copper pour when manufacturing a PCB to create a ground plane. Additionally, for SMD at least, a selection to not have thermal relief ground connections would almost completely eliminate the issue I was having since I was working with mostly SMD parts. Implementing a vector solution could be as 'easy' as just automating the above described workarounds. Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. After which, I had this: This is the ‘Good’ part of ground fills in Fritzing. Contact me directly if we can mention your contribution in a special way. Now the problem would be converting back What you probably want is a way to draw a wire and On the following example, there are three vias. and IT WORKS. By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and Forgot the part about the board layout. Can somebody help me in creating a copper fill area which is connected to all the ground connections of my circuit? But if you have some nice example Fritzing projects (.fzz) , you can attach them here. What I do notice, though, is that you have no decoupling capacitors for your ICs. Actually it includes some of the ground fill inside the bottom of the yellow rectangle as well. Yes, you can add traces into the mix GND to GND but that doesn't solve the issue. left should be traces, vias, and the ground plane(s). (green ellipses): really small "regions" are messed up or completely missing, here is my testpcb as fzz, gerber and svg export: A rats nest connection check. I’m aware of the ‘simplest example that shows the bug’ and reporting bugs in FOSS software. All the best and thank you again, Applying suggestions on deleted lines is not supported. It’s not on top of the circle as I would expect. And it is amazing how fast So this is confusing…. of the white cursor. VS "I don't like it raining.". Here’s what I get when I do that on my current project: But this is all the further I have gotten on this project so far… Yet it is red. In the gerber viewer I use, the file appear fine. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails. to your account, From zevel...@gmail.com on December 11, 2007 09:36:53. So . I have to shuffle parts/traces around of get what feels like nothing more than luck to get parts to ground. follow-up issues. Alvaro. ground-plane polygons in pixmap space rather than svg space. If you’re getting into more complicated, fine pitch, densely packed, four layer, or high frequency PCB designs, then we recommend taking a look at KiCad or Eagle. Each needs to be handled on its own, and for each we would have to ensure that there are no unwanted side effects. what version of qt do you use for the build? Anyway, here’s my understanding of creating ground fills: Route all the ground connections on the PCB. Only one suggestion per line can be applied in a batch. This worked well for that case…. Already on GitHub? problem right now is that the terminal point of the groundplane connector is its And maybe @vanepp could add his opinion when it comes to parts. It caused hundred of hours of adjusting parts to try and get proper or at least partly proper grounding. I clearly have room to run 2 more traces between the pins of the ESP32, but it appears I can only run one trace from connector to connector. The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: From irasc...@gmail.com on August 24, 2009 23:12:18, From irasc...@gmail.com on August 25, 2009 01:04:46, From irasc...@gmail.com on September 14, 2009 04:41:29, put this off till later: ground plane isn't really stable, From irasc...@gmail.com on February 12, 2010 00:47:36, Owner: co...@irascible.com There are several reasons, each could result in a connection not being made. privacy statement. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. I'm very new to the world of EE and PCB design. Nevertheless, we will improve this of course. Any remaining routing could need vias, which might require ‘islands’ in the ground fill, or need existing traces to be moved to leave room for the via. This turns out to be fairly straight forward when you know how. Same thing goes for the lower part of the pic, I could have used 3 traces instead of one. This is what I got when finished: Once those fills are gone, the remaining ground fill islands will all have red connection dots on them. Note #(todo: I think there is an issue that unconnected gnd fill seeds should automatically be treated as 'connected', but I could not find the issue number right now). Whether that area is connected (has a path) to ground or not. Mmmpf. After a learning curve I'm doing twice the work in half the time on KiCad. I've just completed a PCB layout in Fritzing that uses an Arduino Mega. I can find a lot of specific questions in the forums about ground planes, but i somehow missed a place which would explain in detail how to create one, like a tutorial or simple reference manual. About big polygons that aren't connected to ground (or any other net); some EDA This is actually one of the biggest issues I have been working around with previous issues of fritzing but the newest version is far worse. There is a good chance that the ‘data corruption’ seen is what is causing some of the other issues. have a "personal" misunderstanding of the polarity system, and made the same mistake twice (in my parser, and in the Fritzing generator). so, start fritzing with this option will begin the process: after the panelizer is done, you will have a gerber-folder in your working directory and a message from fritzing that the job is done. No versions were able to correctly connect all grounds and after my project became more complicated I was forced to migrate to different software. Until then entirely disable to ground plane (only allow copper planes) feature to avoid users running into this open knife? Noticed the same problem after upgrading 0.9.4 -> 0.9.9 and re-generating the bottom ground fill on a simple PCB: the voltage regulator core part is left with its center ground pin disconnected from the ground fill: I don't think this happened with 0.9.4, but it did with the same project in 0.9.9. At the top of the pic, I have one 16mil trace connecting two ground fills by going between pins of an ESP32 breakout. The other issue is about connections being to small for very large connector pads, but they are not missing. Again to reiterate, this is an issue with all versions of Fritzing over many years . I was only able to complete my project in 0.9.4. ok, it's gonna get messy. Previous versions could sometimes get very close to unrelated traces, causing shorts. Once you select what nets you want the fill to be connected to, choose the ‘OK and ground fill’ option from the popup window and a ground fill will be created. Unfortunately, those side effects are not rare, and we already had to revert fixes. Another issue I had was the ground fill connectors. I really hope fritzing becomes a move usable product one day. Thanks. (directly, or later during manufacturing) This was fixed in 0.9.6, but a different issue still remains. Sign in These options would not only add to the experience but be solid and viable workarounds until the GND issue is resolved. No matter what Fritzing says, the gerber output is what the boards will be made from so checking they are correct is advised. Both the exact same file. I really hope Fritzing can fix this massive issue. Now I assume I need to route connections between the islands? You signed in with another tab or window. If it's not, then it's another bug that needs to be addressed. does your gerber tool allow for the display of light polarity? I have increased the output resolution about 10 times, but if you zoom hard enough on the generated gerber, you'll still see the polygonized circles. You will color the . A red dot in a fill area identifies an island. Is there any update on this? They are compound shapes so pretty easy to locate. The approach described in comment 12 has been implemented. https://forum.fritzing.org/t/looking-for-modifyed-isolated-carrier-borad/16523/8. From zevel...@gmail.com on February 06, 2009 07:36:09. To create a ground fill, under the ‘ground fill’ menu, choose the ‘Choose ground Fill Seed(s)…’ option. Now, we have more situations in which the ground plane calculation fails, but at least there is a workaround, by manually routing the connections. On one hand, I like the idea or adding the ground plane as they look better (and I would add it if it were for production). I’ve narrowed this down to just the ‘c’ area previously mentioned: They show ground fill connecting to the pins. For this exercise, I have joined the pads without using the ground plane. Of course this needs an explanation. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. Drop the top-right corner of the square on the area you want filled. be to try converting the SVGs to QPainterPaths (which have ellipses, rects, lines, Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. Mini feature spec: Right now, the ground fill works in pixel graphics, which I think is a flawed approach. Should I keep the decoupling capacitor's vias isolated from ground fills? Should there be keepout zones between ground pins and ground fill? i'm unsure if the cursor-bug comes from qt5.4.1 or your changes. I point this out because I wonder if the issues in 0.9.6 is an exacerbation of the same issue. From irasc...@gmail.com on February 06, 2009 07:06:01. Based on my experience using the (working) ground fill in 0.9.4, all of my ground connections had always been highlighted in red - perhaps I assumed that was just the color coding used for highlighting ground connections stuck_out_tongue. I moved the traces around, deleted the ground fill, and created a new one using fritzing’s PCB Copper Fill tool. I was also wondering how bad are copper "islands".. i have some places in Fritzing where the islands are red, these of course seem just like all the other copper when exporting to pdf for . Movie with a scene where a robot hunter (I think) tells another person during dinner that you can recognize a cyborg by the creases in their fingers. Lets talk thanks again for your support. See here: The three blue circles are electrolytic caps, standard fritzing parts, and all connected to ground. but i will do more testing during the next days. Did you run design rules check? Ground plane tutorial - beginners - fritzing forum We recommend checking your settings by clicking on Custom. I don't think this got worse from 0.9.4 to 0.9.6. The GND connections should always be routed in the schematics or breadboard view. first of all you need a folder structure like: Thanks in advance. I have a LQFP-100 device with some pins supposed to be connected to ground. All the vias are set to ground. @gmail.com on August 24, 2009 06:47:24 Original issue: http://code.google.com/p/fritzing/issues/detail?id=776 davidperrenoud added enhancement labels on Aug 25, 2014 Is there an issue for tracking the lack of ratsnest connection check support for ground fills, that together with a fix for this issue would make the manual routing of ground traces unnecessary? so my suggestion about that does not help. 31 comments DetonationEMS commented on Mar 10, 2021 • edited Main reason still is that Fritzing was not improved for many years until we restarted development. operator that "grows out" a few pixels from each blob in the drawing (sort of like a Not normally a problem. I hope you accept this PR, because it tremendously improves the quality of the output. I've just run into this today upgrading from 0.9.4 to 0.9.8 – I've got pins that are completely absent a ground. It can be reproduced as shown above with any grounded parts or pad. The ESP32 part (‘c’), I downloaded from the forum. toggle menu. However, attempting to select the ground fill segment from "under" any component outline was VERY fiddly, and once the ground fill segment was in place and de-selected, it was more or less impossible to move. I paid for and updated to .0.9.9 because I saw in the release notes that some work was done in this area in an earlier version. i use viewmate and there gerber seems to be broken (without any editing the gerber) and as far as i know, it is really complex to fix the gerber-output. if i delete the " = 0;" the error is gone and the only other error i get is a C2668 with some uint qHash. Any pin that connects to ground would automatically be connected to the ground plane - provided that you manage to define the copper area as a ground plane. therefore you start fritzing with the -i option. It only takes a minute to sign up. Yes, some ground fills will be connected to ground connections with copper, but you still need to connect them so the connection dots turn green. It was worth doing in the end anyway to make the board easier to solder – the default 4-sided ground connections in Fritzing don't provide much in the way of thermal isolation. Otherwise, there may not be a path to connect all of the connectors in the “ground” net. Ok, I think I'm done with this wave of changes, could you try again please? the priority is for the optional boards and how important they are, now you can use the inscriber. Parts not grounding. · Issue #3794 · fritzing/fritzing-app · GitHub the gerber seems to be correct and so smooth !!! Fritzing is a free design program that can be used to design circuits on breadboards, create schematics, and even develop PCBs. I'm looking into the excellon file format, the spec is a bit messy, and it looks like a 10 of 100 factor problem, I try to understand what was meant to be output (GerbView displays the holes fine). i think this pullrequest is obsolete and all changes are merged with the pull-request #3203, thanks for this amazing work @nraynaud and @Kazade. Routing connections to ground fill islands can be a bit challenging. part/trace/pcb -> it seems: the cursor jumps to the left upper corner the xml file has to sit in the same folder like the fzz's and have to look like: panel c1 is the amount of costs for the first panel, c2 for the copy of the panel, the board members are the fzz-files sitting in your working folder. I am asking because a possible fix could still cause the same problem for your use case then. Thanks for contributing an answer to Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange! Cc: stefanhermann79@googlemail.com I have long moved on from fritzing and migrated to KiCad. folder/products. In order to create ground fills, the first step is to run traces connecting all the ground connections on your board. Select Arduino Shield from shape — properties. Which could be a “good” thing. The same can usually be done if you want to connect to the Ground fill with a wider connection for higher currents. fritzing ground plane Wide enough, because the fill honors whatever keepout limit is configured. By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and 577), We are graduating the updated button styling for vote arrows, Statement from SO: June 5, 2023 Moderator Action. maybe we can make something like an "if else" so the panelizer still uses the old style... Well, I'm leaving for a trip tomorrow, but could you send me an example file to use the panelizer so I can fix it next month? ok, let's try to talk the same language I used this specification for the format: http://www.ucamco.com/files/downloads/file/81/the_gerber_file_format_specification.pdf. I am attaching the project file for reference. the pc option looks for sketches with custom created parts because they are often the reason for a bad gerber output. What can happen with the nets is that a connector or an IC defines a pin as ground, but it has a different net name. ok, that solves the first problem. to SVG. The examples are still without ground plane in 0.9.4. The closer and closer I’ve looked at the ground fill, the more I realize how bad it is. i will do some more testing, if they do not fail, i merge all the changes! So you rearranged the parts until the auto-ground fill would cover all connections. If you connect them with a trace, then that happens automatically. Cutouts can be added to the board outline. performance slows down because a lot of ratsnest wires get generated. I think it can take too much for a small improvement. I found someone else, I think Josh Stewart who had the same complaint and had to abandon fritzing because of it. It looks that this depends on the distance of the connectors to their neighbours. The red dot marked ‘b’ is an island that is connected to the GND net through the via right next to it. yesterday i give it another try. So the number of red dots is the number of fill islands. Connecting them would require something like a via, or a jumper. I think the clipping works, the code is more and more arcane. Twice, the ground fill connectors were right where I wanted to place a via, making it hard to connect the two together. Kinda like sticking your fingers in an electrical outlet as a kid. Fritzing will generate the ground fills. i already solved the cursor bug. anyway i downloaded qt5.4.1 to try the build with it. :). Sign in The ground fill options are found in the pcb view’s ‘routing’ menu, under ‘ground fill’ option. Fritzing requires you to set the same rules for the autorouter as for the design rules checking. easy pouring of ground planes on the PCB. @jonathanhogg Target release is "next". @el-j , can you test this on the panelizer process? Of course it is a real issue, I totally agree with that. It does not connect to any connectors that I can see. If you can't find what you're looking for, please contact us at. i have the same error now with some double in RectAperture and RoundAperture. there are at least 2 different steps to use it. thank you for your great initiative! o Select layer and set stroke to 0.75 pt (no more lines). Suggestions cannot be applied while the pull request is queued to merge. anyway, i cannot merge your request because the panelizer sadly crash the hole fritzing application now. On the other hand, it makes them more difficult to understand for newbies. PDF How to Make a Fritzing Diagram - arxterra.com hej again, i checkout the changes and sadly now there is problem with some QPointF *seedPoint fritzing ground plane MonEnergy Consult LLC . Fritzing notifies about unrouted connections, the hint should always be visible in the bottom bar. I am sorry my explanation wasn't very good. Yet it’s not connected to the ground fill. While I am far from an expert on ground fill, I think there is a problem. Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. After all my ground fill work is done - useless ones deleted, connected ones connected together, etc, etc… I noticed a capacitor’s value was incorrect. but there are some bugs now and a lot of unsigned parameters. Open that folder using your operating system and you’ll see your files. There is no reason for c4 to have not been grounded. I think this forum thread is another instance of this same bug. If you’ve added a ground plane to your design and then move components or add traces, then any fabrication outputs will be incorrect, and your board will not work. So now are they connected? It is still a problem, just maybe not where you are seeing the symptoms. In the posted image, the via is shown as green. From brendan....@gmail.com on January 19, 2009 06:32:37. If you try to connect them only through the ground plane, you will have to do it as described in the forum link. By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct. the svg file has a bigger size than its viewbox. There is no clipping in the panelizer, because it calls back everything one layer at a time, so when I receive the order to generate the drill file, I don't have the information about the PCB shape (ditto for the silkscreen/soldermask clipping). should support auto-pouring of ground planes in board layout #58 - GitHub packages call them "orphans" and it's usually desirable to keep them to cut down on arcs, and cubics) then do the subtraction. Everything with an arrow is not grounded. It only has the routed trace connecting it to the ground fill. It's using the same algorithm as the copper fill. The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered: It would help if you can upload the file or a minimum example. (pink circles): things outside of the pcb-board should be "deleted/clipped". here is a decomposition: Already on GitHub? do you want thin or thick connections): Add tests, so we can ensure the ground plane works in all applicable situations: This is already solved. can be left electrically floating. fritzing ground plane - pearsonairporttaxiservices.com Not long ago into this design I figured that if i did a ground plane on the bottom and top, and make sure only and all GND connectors will be connected to it, then i won't need to connect those GND with wire, making my traces better. Is that also preferred for working around the issue with the ratsnest routing /connection checks not understanding ground fills? First Project in Eagle — 555's Flasher | by J3 - Medium Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled. the panelizer feature is in a very experimental status. We will probably issue a new release based on this feature. Didn't include schematic, i can if needed, it is basically: I remember reading Josh from speeduino made some comments about this very same this some years ago on the fritzing forum. If more than one, place them in a new layer named ground planes. Ground fill does not (always) connect vias to ground planes #2095 - GitHub Basically, we select the ground fill from the menu and compare the result to a reference image, for each build of Fritzing. You signed in with another tab or window. But Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.