for the ones interested in mechanical collaboration and enclosure design with kicad, I developed a 3D MCAD tool for converting kicad ECAD board and assemblies to STEP mechanical model. 'Kicad StepUp' is a tool set to easily export your kicad pcb EDA (board and 3D parts) to STEP model. The artwork can be used for MCAD interchange and collaboration, and for enclosure design. The 3D visualization of components on board assemblies in kicad 3dviewer, will be the same in your mechanical software, because of the STEP interchange format. here there is a video tutorial of the script: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/ Moreover, KiCad StepUp tool set will let you to load the kicad footprint inside FreeCAD and align the 3D part with a visual real time feedback of the 3d model and footprint reciprocal position. With this tool is possible to download a part from on-line libraries (e.g. 3dcontentcentral, grabcad, etc), align the model to kicad footprint and export the model to wrl, for immediate 3d-viewer alignment in pcbnew. Maurice
Hi @easyw, Thanks for sharing this info with us. We will take a look at it and also we will share the news around as well. Do you have any tutorials or blog that we can share with others? Thanks, Tom Nuamto Lab
@admin thank you for your reply... to see some video tutorial have a look here: basic howto 3d model aligner tool the Starter Guide http://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/files/kicadStepUp-starter-Guide.pdf/download and a self containing demo http://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/files/latest/download There is also a nice review with a description of the workflow at Hackaday https://hackaday.com/2015/11/08/kicad-script-hack-for-better-mechanical-cad-export/ and a forum topic at kicad.info https://forum.kicad.info/t/kicad-stepup-new-exporter-for-3d-mcad-feedbacks-are-welcome/1048 If I can be of assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me Maurice
