kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

There are a number of options:

1. Recently Maurice wrote a script which uses FreeCAD to create a
STEP modelusing the bare board IDF file and other data in the
.kicad_pcb file:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~easyw/kicad-stepup/trunk/files

No doubt there are still some issues but this is currently the best
method for exporting a detailed mechanical model.

2. IDF: If you do nothing and simply opt to export the board then
you only get a bare board - this step is necessary anyway if you
use Maurice's script to create a STEP model. If you wish for a more
detailed IDF model you will need to spend some time creating the
associated component outline files.  The official IDF documentation
is here:

https://github.com/ciampix/kicad-doc/tree/master/src/IDF_Exporter

but if you can't generate the documentation and want a PDF version
the original (more inaccurate) version is here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By_XTJN-s8aXbkM5UTE0Zm5SN28

Now for Solidworks to process an IDF file you need CircuitWorks which
is only provided with "Solidworks Premium" - bummer. Fortunately you
can now convert IDF to IGES (which any MCAD can understand) using
the 'idf2igs' tool in the IGES library which is in development:

https://github.com/cbernardo/libIGES

There are also online tools to help such as:
https://www.ecad.io

That site provides all the functionality of CircuitWorks - you can
substitute real models for the simplistic IDF outlines. However, if the
simple IDF outlines are fine for your mechanical work then the
libIGES tool is a completely free solution.

Expect more MCAD exchange features in the future, though the wait
may be a little long due to limited resources. My libIGES already has
the capability to create models of the bare PCB and to add other
existing IGES models to the mechanical assembly and I plan to add
an IGES export to KiCad some time after the pending stable release.
Unfortunately I also need to do some major work on the KiCad code
base before I add this code so it could be another 6 months or more
before you see that feature in KiCad. There have also been discussions
on adding a STEP export facility using the OpenCascade libraries,
but this is also dependent on those code changes which I need to
make to KiCad. So for now, Maurice's scripts are really the best
option for creating a detailed mechanical model.

- Cirilo


On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 7:21 AM, Jose A. Saumell <saumell.jose@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Hello group,
>
> I have been trying to export a 3D model of a populated PCB to Solidworks
> and after a few days I want to ask you for help.
>
> I've generated VRML files for each component and did an export in VRML
> which I can open and see in FreeCAD correctly.
>
> I need to interface with Mechanical Engineer that has their own Solidworks
> model for the enclosure. He has been able to open the populated PCB on
> Freecad as well. (To achieve this I had to use a text editor and modify all
> the url entries on WRL file with an absolute path on his system containing
> shapes3D folder, at least freecad does not seem to work with relative path)
>
> What he was able to achieve so far is opening the empty PCB in solidworks
> and load each individual component and placing manually on the board.
>
> Is there any other way or tips you can provide? I've read about IDF and I
> may go that route with the next design if it means easier interfacing with
> Solidworks.
>
> Thanks
>
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