kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo_bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi folks,

 It is fairly easy to use the existing scheme of 3D model selection for including other types of 3D models such as IDF and STEP; such models may be of no interest to the 3D viewer but are useful for other exporters such as the IDF exporter currently in development and the STEP model support which I still dream of.

 To support the specification of various models, I propose to make some changes to S3D_MASTER including:

1. introduction of an Is3DType() to determine if any particular consumer is interested in the model referred to by m_Shape3DName.  In the case of the 3D viewer any file which does not have a wrl or x3d extension is ignored, but for other exporters such as the VRML and IDF exporters, the export routines must check that the name refers to a type of model which they are capable of handling.

2. The Is3DType() function relies on an internal flag being reset whenever the file name (m_Shape3DName) is changed. It would be crazy to keep track of all code which changed the name as the code evolves, so I propose using accessor functions to set and get the model filename. There are very few places in code where m_Shape3DName is accessed, so this is not a big job.

Those are all the changes required to support IDFv3 component models (and other mechanical models in the future). I have working code on my local branch which implements (1) but I wanted some feedback before proceeding with (2).

Improving the IDF code by adding component footprint models will allow people who need to interact with mechanical designers to provide an IDF description of the board mechanics; from the mechanical modeling point of view this is superior to the current method used by people which is to convert a VRML model into a solid model through a variety of steps.

Any comments/suggestions?

Regards,
Cirilo