I got this from Smiley's latest Nuts and Volts article.

It is a virtual circuit prototyping that gives you a breadboard on your PC (Windows, Mac and Linux).

You build your circuit just like we do with the Nerdkit's breadboard and then you apparently can get a PCB from your breadboard design.

It is still beta and I have just seen the opening screen with the breadboard "Parts Bin".

You drag components from the parts bin to the breadboard, cool.

Ralph

Duh, thats Fritzing.org.

Ralph

I played around with it a bit, one thing I didn't like is that it wouldn't let you place parts diagonally. For instance if I wanted to add a crystal, I couldn't put it diagonally between two adjacent rows, it had to span multiple rows which meant I had to use jumpers. It also gets confusing when trying to wire devices like 7 segment displays or shift registers because you have so many wires in such a small space. It would have been nice to have had the option to route wires off the board and back on so you could see what is connected to what. Other than that and it's a neat program with great potential. Didn't try any PCB building from it though.

Rick

I have already done a bug report.

I placed a ATmega168 on the breadboard but it did not align with the holes on the breadboard. None of the components I tried aligned correctly.

I did not get very involved with making up a circuit.

It will be interesting to see a schematic and what they do for PCB manufacturing.

I wonder if they produce gerber(?) files? Or if you have to use them as the fab.

Ralph