PCBs in Virtual Reality

Hello fellow humans!

I posted a while back about 3D PCB Design (in VR). Inspired by science fiction movies like Iron Man, a small group of undergraduate seniors and I set out to create a VR environment to view our KiCad designs in. We think this could be very useful for PCB design reviewers, or anyone who just wants to have fun walking inside their PCBs. I linked our final presentation below.

Thanks again to the incredible KiCad team :slight_smile:

We would love to hear your feedback!

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Nice work guys, fun to see the finished presentation!
Do any of you plan to continue work on it?

This is some seriously dope tech. Super keen to give this a shot.
Seeing all the guts of a complex 3d object leads to a lot of occlusion. I’d be leaning towards thinner, translucent vias. Add in net highliting from VR and you’d be on to a winner.

Any chance of getting in support for the 3d models, silkscreen, soldermask etc? I’m envisioning a collaborative version of the current 3d visualizer. Making small edits and rerouting would be super nice as well.

I looked at this wondering how I might use it. There is no doubt it’s really cool and I like the ability to keep spreading planes apart until a good view is available.

How about the ability to highlight a specific net? I’m thinking of High Speed design and being able to see where a net ‘Y’ splits like A11 on a DDR bus feeding multiple memory chips. Or seeing the ‘V’ highlighted? The ability to highlight a net makes it easier to track through the maze of vias and other nets. Or maybe being able to highlight all nets which are supposed to be on the same impedance layer, see if any are connecting or routing where they shouldn’t? Or identify partially drilled via holes for very high speed design.

I’m sure others here can come up with other useful design scenarios too.

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