Feature request: use STEP by default (or allow configuration) in footprints' 3D model

I’m not sure whether there’s already a configuration for this, but this has been bugging me for a long time; the 3D models built-in directory contains most (all?) footprints in .wrl and .step versions; but the footprint uses the .wrl by default.

When doing Alt-3 to view the 3D rendering, either one of them works; but when exporting to STEP (which it is my understanding that that is the recommended format when exporting to pass to the mechanical engineers designing whatever enclosure or target location for the board), the .wrl’s produce an error message that can’t export .wrl to a STEP file, and the exported STEP model ends up missing that element.

The way around this has been to go through every single footprint and replace the extension .wrl to .step (which has worked so far for every single footprint where I’ve tried). But this is, well, annoying to say the least!

Am I missing something? If not, will you consider this “bug fix” request?

If a .wrl model is specified in a footprint, and a .step model with the same name exists in the same directory, the exporter will pick up the .step model, if “Substitute similarly named models” is enabled:

image

Note that if a .wrl model is specified in a footprint, and that .wrl file is missing, the .step model won’t be picked up.

2 Likes