kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Tomasz Wlostowski <tomasz.wlostowski@xxxxxxx>]

On 01/15/2014 01:27 AM, Cirilo Bernardo wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I believe we can accommodate various types of 3D models with minimal
> changes to the code base. Specifically, small changes to the class
> S3D_MASTER and the GUI for associating 3D parts. I propose that we
> allow the inclusion of other model types (at the moment only *.wrl
> and *.x3d are allowed). The 3D viewer and VRML exporter will then
> need minor changes so that they only process VRML and X3D files. The
> IDF exporter can then make use of any *.idf component footprint
> descriptions and in the future when we have some MCAD exporters they
> will be able to filter only the items they need in a similar
> fashion.
>
> ...
> Any comments / suggestions?

Hi Cirilo,

Many thanks for your efforts. I've seen many folks asking for STEP/IGES 
support in 3D viewer (also maybe export), so some time ago I wrote a 
STEP/IGES importer based on OpenCascade. I decided to not push it to 
Kicad, because it would require linking pcbnew with a load of OCC libs 
and drag in few hundred megabytes in dependencies. Maybe implementing a 
dynamic plugin system (see Miguel's blueprint) will fix this dependency 
issue.

I attached the importer (using structures somewhat similar to the 
pcbnew's 3D viewer) and an example app for viewing STEP files. I hope 
this will help you with improving 3D model support in pcbnew.

Cheers,
Tom

Attachment: step-importer.tar.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data