I’m having trouble getting a pretty simple 3D model to show up in the 3D view.
You can download my model here in both its original SketchUp 2014 format and in the cleaned-up VRML format.
(The VRML put out by SketchUp was utter trash: a pile of disconnected triangles instead of a solid model, flipped normals, etc. It actually crashed Photoshop! I was able to open it in C4D and clean the mess up to give what you see here.)
The model is a rough first pass at a typical Phoenix Contact header block.
I’ve boiled the testing process down as far as I can get it. Basically, I open the PCB footprint editor, create a new component, add a circle to the board to give it some physical dimension, and then try to attach the model. I’ve tried with both absolute and relative paths. No matter what I try, when I go into the 3D view from within the footprint editor, I see nothing but my silkscreen.
I have been able to attach one of the models from the standard KiCad library to the footprint, so I know I’m doing something right.
I don’t think the cleaned-up VRML file is at fault. Blender, C4D, and Photoshop all open it correctly.
I modeled it at real-world scale: 1 3D unit is 1mm, and the object is roughly a 9mm cube.
I assume if I was wildly off on the scale, it would still show the model, but either as a speck in the middle of the footprint, or completely dwarfing the silkscreen outline. Am I wrong about that? Will it instead do something silly like try to draw the model like a kind of “house” around my footprint, so that I’m looking at the inner walls of the model? I don’t see any walls off in the distance in the 3D window, but that could just be because they’re out beyond the clipping plane. Perhaps KiCad should offer to scale the model to the silkscreen dimensions.
I’m using a recent build of KiCad (mid-January) on OS X Yosemite. I built it using this Homebrew tap.