@qu1ck thank you. Did it and solved it 
Thank you for the help
I have just installed Kicad 6.0 and I have a similar issue. I havew two separate folder, with Kicad 5.99 and Kicad 6.0. In Kicad 5.99, 3D models all work ok, but in Kicad 6.0 the default ones do not work. If I right click on them, they work, but they don’t work in the view on the entire PCB. What is the solution?
Example:
@Cezar_Chirila Check my answer above. You need to create a variable that on 6.0.0 was changed with another name and it doesn’t work on previous project.
@tormyvancool Unfortunately my problem is a separate one than yours. As I have upgraded from 5.99 (essentially 6.0 nightly - prerelease) there was no need to add any missing variables. I’ll dig and update if I can find a fix. As I have previously mentioned, strangely, if I check an individual part, the 3D renderer works, it is only broken when I try to view the entire PCB.
Later Edit: I am such an idiot. The “Toggle SMD 3D Models” was disabled by default. That fixed it. Sorry for causing any trouble.
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“Toggle SMD 3D Models”?
I also had this issue and it was fixed by adding the missing KISYS3DMOD to point to the same location as KICAD6_3DMODEL_DIR. I did at some point in the past download the updated zips from the git repo so I may still bump into some that are missing but so far so good on my 6.0 test project.
@themaninthesuitcase Indeed it’s exactly what I did to solve it (see previous comment wher I posted the screenshot). It has to be tackled because it is an issue.
Probably the old variable is contained into projects, hence opening them, we face out this issue. The new variable is valid for new projects only :-/
One PC where I had installed some of the recent 5.99, 6.0 rc1 and rc2 builds before release had no 3D path problems and included the old missed path
Another PC where I waited for the 6.0.0 before adding to 5.1.12 had the path missing
This was usefull info, I got two missing components into my 3D picture.
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It’s this. I opened my 6.0 test project in a text editor and searched for the old path variable:
Seems the upgrade doesn’t update the old path to the new one. This may be by design, but given it’s the old system path it feels like an omission.
@themaninthesuitcase this is clearly a bug. Because when you open a project on 6.0.0 it’s asking you
- to import the settings from the old version
- it’s old project and it will be saved as new (or something like that)
It doesn’t import the custom paths at all (my custom libraries I had to re-import them manually)
When it saves the old project converting it, it doesn’t change that variable.
The screenshot indicates that the footprints embedded in your board file are old and point to the old model location. (3d model paths are embedded inside each footprint, and footprints are embedded in the pcb file when they are used).
When/how was your test project created? If it was created with old (pre-v6) libraries, this makes sense.
The footprints released with v6 use the v6 variables, so my suggestion is either:
- update your libraries to ones released with v6 (if not already), and use the update footprint from library function in pcbnew for each of your footprints to get the new paths
- or define ${KISYS3DMOD} to point to the same place as the v6 variable; no footprint updates required
It was a project created with 5.1.10 upgraded by 6.0 as a test project. I would have expected that this would be managed by the upgrade but thinking about it footprints are “user data” so changing automatically them as part of an upgrade is probably not smart.
I’ll have a look at manually updating them, I already have KISYS3DMOD set to the v6 location as above.
I ran “Update Footprints from Library…” in the Pbcnew Tools menu and it fixed all instances of this issue.
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@themaninthesuitcase great suggestion! I applied it right now, on an old project: it works. Thanks a zillion
Finally it worked for me.
The 3D Viewer did not work at first, after the library update in the PCB Editor
After resetting to the default settings in the 3D Viewer, it now works
Version: 6.0.0-d3dd2cf0fa~116~ubuntu20.04.1, release build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.4
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 5.4.0-91-generic x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, cinnamon, x11
Build Info:
Date: Dec 23 2021 14:23:02
wxWidgets: 3.0.4 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.5.2
Curl: 7.68.0
ngspice: 31
Compiler: GCC 9.3.0 with C++ ABI 1013
Build settings:
KICAD_USE_OCC=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON
So If I don’t want to risk that my project does not work anymore when I reinstall kicad or in another computer, do I need to manually replace that in my proj?
Would that leave the project as a standard kicad6 project?
Why don’t you read all the comments? There was suggested a definitive solution by @themaninthesuitcase
Tahnks @tormyvancool… I did that but it did not work, it gave me 19 “footprint not found” errors
For example:
Error: Update footprint C11 from ‘Capacitor_SMD:C_1206_3216Metric_Pad1.42x1.75mm_HandSolder’ to ‘Capacitor_SMD:C_1206_3216Metric_Pad1.42x1.75mm_HandSolder’: *** footprint not found ***
Error: Update footprint R21 from ‘Resistor_SMD:R_2512_6332Metric_Pad1.52x3.35mm_HandSolder’ to ‘Resistor_SMD:R_2512_6332Metric_Pad1.52x3.35mm_HandSolder’: *** footprint not found ***