X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to geda-user-bounces using -f X-Recipient: geda-user AT delorie DOT com X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com From: Kai-Martin Knaak Subject: Re: [geda-user] PCB and 3D Views Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 15:47:20 +0100 Organization: Institut =?UTF-8?B?ZsO8cg==?= Quantenoptik Lines: 49 Message-ID: References: <546A29CF DOT 8010909 AT xs4all DOT nl> <509690271 DOT 602819 DOT 1416256484736 DOT JavaMail DOT yahoo AT jws10063 DOT mail DOT ne1 DOT yahoo DOT com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" X-Complaints-To: usenet AT ger DOT gmane DOT org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 130.75.103.107 User-Agent: KNode/4.14.1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id sAIEhIv7032274 Reply-To: geda-user AT delorie DOT com Cirilo Bernardo wrote: > Another approach is to use 'IDF' - without making changes to PCB, > it should be possible to at least export the board as an IDF file > with correct dimensions. The more I think about it, the more I like this approach. The big benefit of IDF would be the ability to indicate what components are supposed to be placed on the board. Position, orientation and keep-out of components is also included. This additional data would allow for a 3D representation of a populated board. A python script inside freecad could assemble the components on the virtual PCB, and render the result to PDF. Alternatively, freecad could export to STL which can be read by blender for extra fancy rendering. Freecad can export to STEP, too. So this would connect the 3D workflow to other CAD applications like SolidWorks. Here is a document with the IDF format specification: http://www.aertia.com/docs/priware/IDF_V30_Spec.pdf > there is also a tool to convert IDF to VRML if you > want a VRML output for visualization. IMHO, visualization should be done by the 3D CAD application of choice. No need to reinvent wheels here. ---<)kaimartin(>--- -- Kai-Martin Knaak tel: +49-511-762-2895 Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik fax: +49-511-762-2211 Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover http://www.iqo.uni-hannover.de GPG key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=Knaak+kmk&op=get