Hi Maurice,
It sounds a bit tricky (however sounds a possible ..tricky way.. of using kicad features.. and there is no imposition on how the users use the features! )
How does the other ECAD deal with that case scenarios? (with the process you describe to align the model?)
Mario
________________________________________
From: Kicad-developers [kicad-developers-bounces+mrluzeiro=ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of easyw [easyw@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 25 February 2016 15:17
To: Wayne Stambaugh; kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] VRML export
Creating a footprint with no pads,
silkscreens, and/or text and only a 3D model seems a bit
counter-intuitive to me.
I normally use anchor pad (which correspond to anchor of the enclosure)
and I set it as Virtual module attribute
Then in 3D-viewer you see your pad with Cu and Silk
That pad has also a 3D model associated, which is i.e. the enclosure
When I model the 3D enclosure, I load the pad footprint in FreeCAD with
kicad StepUp and I align the 3D model to the pad, then I export the
enclosure VRML model to be displayed in pcbnew 3d-viewer
Enabling or not the Virtual 3D models you will see or not the enclosure
just beside your pcb artwork
the result is like this
https://kicad-info.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/original/2X/0/0b70db5f2bd661b6417bd086cf45035a5fa263ff.gif
Or you can build a model with just an alignment cross in i.e. F.Fab or
F.Silks and Hide reference and value, and assign to it the 3D model with
virtual attrib
both procedure can co-exist with the actual kicad format and will give
the tool a nice mechanical feature
Thank you
Maurice
