I remember that before in 3D view you could select an option to see the layers in 3D with the colors that were being used in PCB Draw, however in 8 you can no longer do this. Does anyone else miss this feature?
Is there a way to enable it that I don’t know about?
In KiCad V8 you can set the layer color in the appearance manager by double clicking on the colored square in front of the layer name.
However, when I change these colors, both copper layer always have the same color, and it is the color of the last color changed. No matter if it’s the front or the back layer.
It looks like this is a bug.
Can you verify this?
Which OS are you using?
If you can verify this, then it should probably be reported on gitlab.
Application: KiCad 3D Viewer x86_64 on x86_64
Version: 8.0.4-8.0.4-0~ubuntu20.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.2
FreeType 2.10.1
HarfBuzz 2.6.4
FontConfig 2.13.1
libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3
Platform: Linux Mint 20.3, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, X11, xfce, x11
OpenGL: AMD, AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.42.0, 5.15.0-117-generic, LLVM 12.0.0), 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 21.2.6
Build Info:
Date: Jul 17 2024 01:37:21
wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.6.3
Curl: 7.68.0
ngspice: 42
Compiler: GCC 9.4.0 with C++ ABI 1013
Build settings:
There are also some settings in Preferences / Preferences / 3D Viewer / General.
The Material Properties can be set to:
And this does change it a bit, but the (default?) colors do not make sense to me.
Sure, that works, but I want all the layers, if I have 6 layers, each layer to be a different color so I can keep track of it, what you show only changes the color of all the copper.
It has nothing to do with what I’m asking! If I have 6 layers, I want each layer to look a different color, like it did before.
Looks like there is a feature request on Gitlab for this:
Consider giving it a thumbs up on Gitlab to show support. There is a note on the issue about this being a limitation of the rendering engine, so it probably is not an easy fix.
I think you missed my point.
What I was trying to say was that in the appearance manager, there is a separate color box for each layer. You can set each layer to a different color (Red and blue in my first screenshot), and therefore this function should already be supported, but it does not work in the GUI, because all copper layers are set to the same color.
And therefore I added:
Naaa, there isn’t, just the outer layers. My board has 4 layers . . .
Obviously PCB Editor shows them . . .
And while I’m here . . . shouldn’t terminology be standardised ? Top Layer and Bottom Layer in PCB Editor while it’s Front Copper (F.Cu) and Bottom Copper (B.Cu) in 3D Top/Front ?? shouldn’t KiCad choose one and stick with it ?
Indeed. I only had a 2 layer PCB. I just tested it by changing the board setup to a 6 layer PCB, and this does not show in the 3D viewer.
But it is “standardized”. KiCad always uses F.Cu and B.Cu for top and bottom layers, but I guess that your intention is that if you rename the layers in the PCB editor, that the 3D viewer should also use these names.
I guess these are all just bugs and simple to fix. The addition of the same appearance manager panel in the 3D viewer as for the PCB editor is a very recent change in the 3D viewer. Not too long ago you could only change the settings through the menu. So I guess that someone changed the code to add the appearance manager panel, bud did not do much testing with it.
I have seen this happen quite a lot in KiCad, and it’s understandable. The time of developers is a very precious resource for the KiCad project, so they implement some new functions, do some minimal testing, and then commit it to git and move on to the next issue. Then KiCad users can do the testing, (That’s why the nightly versions exist) and report back with the bugs they find, and these bugs get fixed. With testing, searching for bugs and reporting them, you can help with the software development of KiCad without having any programming knowledge.
In the link posted by scandey to gitlab, Jeff young responded with:
This is not currently supported by the rendering engine.
I was a bit surprised by that and added a comment that KiCad V7 did show all copper layers in different colors.
I just checked a current 8.99
The 3D and PCB are now both F.Cu & B.Cu.
Signal Layers 1 & 2 on PCB are now In1.Cu & In2.Cu.
No In1.Cu or In2.Cu in 3D.
Changing colours is really buggy at the moment.
Seems like changes are on the way. 
Are you on Kicad 7, because Kicad 8 has the name changes and standardisation for PCB & 3D.
Silly me had never noticed 'till now, only been 7 months!!! 
That’s weird.
I just found an old 7 project and opened it in 8. It is the 8 program with F & B.Cu and the 7 project. The yellow banner is at the top of the PCB Editor, so I know it was last saved in 7.
Perhaps it’s a Windows thing ?
Maybe.
Maybe you are just lucky 
What is this talk about layer names?
I assumed RaptorUK renamed the layers in his own project (Has been in KiCad for a long time).
If you change the layer names in: PCB Editor / File / Board Setup / Board Stackup / Board Editor Layers then these changes show in the PCB Editor, but not in the 3D viewer, and this looks like a simple bug to me.
The internal layers aso not being listed in the 3D viewer also looks like a bug.
And I don’t understand why showing different colors for the copper layers in the 3D viewer is suddenly “not supported” anymore.
This works in 8 when you untick “use board stack-up colors” but the colors are not stable. eg. Assign red to F.Cu and blue to B.Cu then toggle solder paste or F.Silk on and off. F & B. Cu will change color and tracks seem to be missing.
8.99 seems to be a work in progress at the moment. You cannot tick or un-tick the “use board stack-up colors” and the colors will change if the 3D image is closed and then re-opened.
I have already seen that in the night version they added the feature I requested! Thank you very much!!
Thank scandey (he added the gitlab link) and JP Charras (he implemented the fix) for it. I just added a simple comment on gitlab.
Also, do all the copper layers now show properly in the 3D viewer? I can’t run a recent nightly at the moment and can’t test this myself.
Yes, all the layers are displayed correctly, the only thing I saw is that it does not respect the stacking space, but I am not sure if it could do that before.
Some of your question marks are upside down.
Forgetting to use actual thickness of the prepreg layers is typically such a small bug, that won’t get fixed until someone reports it (It may already have been reported, so always check.
Also, you can use PCB Editor / Tools / Remove Unused Pads to remove all unused annular rings. KiCad does not have a ful padstack yet (where each layer can have a differently sized pad), but it’s easy to make all those via tubes smooth.
