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To do: Lakshay Gupta
- Add pictures!
- Info on how to charge background of renders
- Fix headers
- Add related articles
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For Mechanical integration generating accurate models of PCBs is incredibly important, as it saves Mech time from CADing each board and reduces human error. Many components like resistors or capacitors are not important for CAD purposes, so in 3D models, they normally should be excluded as these just make the files larger and take more compute to load them in Solidworks.
Introduction
Finding 3D models of parts:
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In an ideal world we want to link a 3D model to a footprint, that way we only need to find the 3D model once and then whenever anyone uses the footprint the model will come linked to it.
Steps:
- go
- Go to the Footprint Editor
- Go to the footprint you want to edit from the left-side menu
- Select “Edit Footprint properties”
- Go to the 3D model's tab
- From there add the link to your 3D model
- You will likely need to use some of the sliders to adjust the rotation and position of your model.
- VERY IMPORTANT
- Remember that if you have a directory linked onto to your computer then someone else may not be able to see it
- All directories should be project relative, meaning every directory you have is linked to the some variable that contains where this KiCAD project is on your computer
- “${KIPRJMOD}” substitutes wherever the KiCAD project is in your computer
- REMEMBER TO STORE 3D MODELS IN THE kicad_library UTSVT-KiCADLibraries submodule in your repo
- Use this to align the model to the hole
- Press save
- In the PCB editor go to Tools -> Update Footprints from Library
- This will update the footprints on your PCB to the changes you made in the library
- Push your changes
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- Go to the PCB editor
- Enter the 3D model view
- Go to the top bar and press “Render view using Raytracing”
- Note that it may take some time to load the image
- Press the same button to exit the raytracing mode
- Press “Copy 3D Image to clipboard” to copy your current view
- This button will also work to copy the not raytraced view
You can also change the background of the renders to have it color match the background for whatever you're putting the render onto
Steps:
- Go to the 3D viewer
- Preferences → Preferences
- 3D Viewer → Colors
- Background color gradient start and background gradient end decide the colors of the background gradient
- Change these to set the color of the background (if you want to make the background a solid color make both fields the same color).