Haha, sorry about my English that little phrasing made the hole difference.
I still made that part 5pins and use a no connect for now. but making a second footprint is a better idea.
Enclosure for RF shielding is not yet validated/decided. Not sure if I really need it or not.
price goes from 22$CAD(plastic) to 90+$CAD for the RF shielded version.
plus the customer told me he liked my white plastic version… so why bother.
placing the connector on the solder side is a good idea. I have no need to access the interior ever.
other than eventual battery replacement I should never see the case anymore in my life once it’s installed to the end location.
I still have Not made any layout, really testings my new footprints… I’m still at a very early stage so I can change things quite a bit. leaving for vacation next week so I thought I try to finish a first proto and order boards online so I can jump start when I return !
I too have no clue about ‘Pi Matching’ and 50 ohm trace making for the antenna part… so I have that to learn quickly first if I want to leave on Friday and not dream about it until I come back… I honestly had ’ 50ohm dreams yesterday ’ board is really small so it should not be a very big challenge I hope. *still very noob at all this.
this where I’m now…
might simply place 2 on each side and have them soldered down after board installation.
EDIT: but part placement (hole preparation on the case) will be a very precise thing… for the first couple that I will be making by hand at least) – when I’ll have more volume, I’ll ask case manufacture to pre-drill holes.
Almost finished my board layout ! (except the SMA part) yayyy!
now I would like to adjust the distance of the connector on the edge of the board to be sure it will be filling the distance between the edge cut of the inner panel and the actual case…(the inner panel is of course smaller than the case interior )
plus I have the eventual possibility to pre drill the case with Hammond… my sales rep Jane Linseman is very friendly
I need to place the connector exactly because I only have a 3mm maximum panel thickness.
but once I try to reimport the board with part with stepup I get this;
the original connector drawing from manufacturer had that 45degree angle… but how come it’s okay in my board(kicad) using the wrl file as 3d model. and not the right one once exported to FreeCAD…
you need too use both .step and .wrl exported from FreeeCAD, not mixing up the two models.
Only the exported from FC are aligned to the footprint… wrl will be used in kicad and STEP will be used in FC.
problem is that I did it with you during last weekend from home… then imported only the footprint later to my work computer. now I’m not sure where the step file should be residing. in KiCAD only the WRL file I’m able to give the target in the property…
STEP and WRL must reside in the same place, the path is what you have assigned to your footprint.
place the STEP file generated by stepup after aligning the model to your fp in the same place in which you have the wrl file. Then StepUp will automatically switch wrl to step letting Fc loading the counterpart STEP model.
I would suggest to move the original STEP model in a different location, check the STEP conversion in FC (loading tthe kicad_pcb file) and verify the STEP model is missing.
Then copy the simplified and re-aligned model to the location in which your wrl is and redo the loading of the kicad_pcb in FC.
I re-exported the file on my work computer, made a new library instead of trying to import the one I’ve made on the other computer.
I’m curious about the workflow on placing the connector exactly on the edge of the board with the case…
trial and error ? placing it in KiCad, import, look, going back, adjust, import again ?
right now I can clearly see that the connector is not on the edge enough yet…
just place a line reference in your fp F_Silks where your connector is supposed to match the edge of the box, and a line reference where your board edge should be.
Then you will have an edge reference for placing the fp in relation to your pcb edge.
You can measure the desired distance in FreeCAD.
you mean to add a line at the footprint creation ?
like adding the case into the original FC file that has the pdf and connector… then adding a line to the fSilk…
At some time you need to measure something
You can do it in FC or using the manufacturer PDF … Anyway it is time to get some reference…
P.S. from your silks you have already the reference for the edge of the enclosure… You need to measure the distance from your board’s edge to the connector.
I see the pdf has a slight angle in the case… I hope it will be negligible… (not adding to much pressure on my board)
the connector/board is not high enough so I need to use the ‘top cover’ instead of the bottom of the case to install by board.
I firstly import the board into FC., then align with mounting holes ( visually ) then (*since I can’t figure contraint with imported parts yet…)
to measure I went to ‘part’ tool, then selected measure linear, selected the interior face of the case and my board… is this the good way ?
I found, making footprint need to draw a lot of draft lines… So if there is commands like Qcad would help, and avoid me had to go back and for with my calculator, datasheet, and draft lines…
Event a scale up / down would help simplify the math. Like if i can draw 10 times bigger - then scaled all back to scale 1 at the end…
Why? Designing anything in a mechanical environment at a scale different from 1:1 is a wrong approach…
Which is the utility to enlarge the scale when you can simply zoom in, without having to change the scale. Only working at 1:1 you can design with an accurate result…
You may have a look at the Image WB above to see how it can be done in a mechanical cad.
What if we can import DXF, (2-color) PNG or some 2D drawing format into the fp-editor but scale is not 1:1? Then use the scale to correct it. Then we can just crate footprint using the outline of that imported image. It may help speedup the process, reduce manual calculation, and create drafts lines…
you need to scale your DXF into a mechanical CAD i.e. LibreCAD or QCAD or FreeCAD to give some open source example.
KiCAD is an ECAD and it has not high support for mechanical tools.
PNG or any image format are not suggested as a reference for mechanical design, unless you use them as a canvas to design with real dimensions. This is what can be done for example in FC using Image WB and Image scale (you missed to read it above).
KiCAD can import DXF, but it can be used only for FSilks or Drawing layers, because for PADS it doesn’t allow to fill the imported outline…
In most cases the outline of the model is not available, not even in DXF format… but the 3D model is available and with the above method (which you missed to read) you can project the 3D model on a XY plane to have the 2D representation of the model itself.
This can be achieved without any calculation or creation of draft lines or even scaling anything…
Hi @Guillaume_Boulay
you now have an improved approach…
please have a look at this new feature for ECAD MCAD collaboration / synchronization
It should put KiCAD & FreeCAD to a new level of mating!
I get this;
?
