Many components pointed at wrong place for 3D models

Layout 3D Models
1

I recently upgraded to v7 (very nice !) and started using the 3D modeling feature.

I tried stepcad and it keeps trying to point to the version6 libraries (that’s a whole other story because I absolutely cannot get it to point to version7 even though i set up the paths in preference).

so in the spirit of “don’t give it a choice” i deleted my version 6 install.
a bunch of my models disappeared.

Searching through the forums i found a post

only KISYS3DMOD is not defined in the paths.

So i add it, point it at the version 7 model libraries and close and re-run KiCAD and it’s still broken.

For example.

${KICAD6_3DMODEL_DIR}/Capacitor_THT.3dshapes/CP_Axial_L10.0mm_D4.5mm_P15.00mm_Horizontal.wrl

Why isn’t KISYS3DMOD being defined if it’s required ?

This has come up in the forum several times. It seems that the install process has a bug in it of some sort…

Any other ideas, other than brute force editing the files with a shell script of some sort ?

2

That seems to be an old post of mine. I think you’ve interpreted it out of context. I don’t use KISYS3DMOD. Here’s a more relevant post:

3

Thanks for your help.

Now I’m even more confused. If it’s pointed to the right place “under the hood” then why do the models not show up ?

And the installation is definitely broken. Viewing the 3D model of any of the footprints similar to what I showed as an example no longer works (it just shows board and silkscreen). But they did before I uninstalled v6.

I did check to make sure the windows environment didn’t have a stray variable setting and it does not.

4

Do you actually have the v7 3D models library installed? Follow the link to see if there is a file there.

Also try displaying a standard footprint which has a 3D model in the footprint editor, does it display? Are your footprints standard or your own? If your own, did you write them into the standard library, which is supposed to be read-only?

5

AHA.

I had my own local path in the

KICAD7_3DMODEL_DIR

variable in addition to the system/install path.

That’s the problem. I tried using ‘;’ as a separator and ‘:’ as a separator and in both cases it ignores the system model path and only looks at my local path.

So that’s good news. If I leave only the system path in, it works as expected. So the v6 labeling was indeed a bit of misdirection.

I did some searching and it looks like it’s not possible to put in multiple paths. I’ll have to set up variable name duplicates in some way ? maybe ?

Wow. I really created my own problem here.

Since I’m directly linking the 3D models in my local footprint library they get pulled in just fine.
Trying to have a secondary directory was the whole cause of the problem. everything works is it should.

6

Sorry, this is beyong my “pay grade” to debug. Please post the software version details and someone else more familiar with 3D models might be able to help. Version info can be copied from:

Help > About KiCad > Copy Version Info

Edit: Ok looks like you worked it out. AFAIK it’s not a search path, just a single path. Using a path variable doesn’t result in a search, just a variable substitution.

7

Thanks so much for your help. Sorry that it was a wild goose chase…

I’m so used to just adding multiple paths into environment variables I never stopped to think that it would be a problem.

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