STEP export missing holes and metal

[aguy]

I’m working on my first board with KiCAD, and I’ve managed to get it how I want it when viewed in the 3D viewer. But when I export it to STEP, it is missing important features like holes. Any ideas how I can get everything to show up in the STEP?

[maui]

I would guess you are using vias for anchor holes, aren’t you?

Vias are dropped when exporting to STEP…
use instead mounting holes footprints
MountingHole.pretty

[paulvdh]

Alternatively, use FreeCAD and Stepup.

[maui]

@paulvdh

Alternatively, use FreeCAD and Stepup.

StepUp also does skip vias… to create a mounting hole you need to use a mounting hole footprint, not a via.

[aguy]

Thanks all, I’ll try using a mounting hole. Any idea why the traces don’t show up in the STEP?

[paulvdh]

How do you make “STEP” ?

In FreeCAD / Stepup, there is a separate button for importing the tracks. I do not know if it also imports the via’s. I’ve not had much use for this, and it’s very slow on my PC (which is 11 years old now, and was just an average thing back then).

[Rene_Poschl]

Step is not meant for making pretty pictures of a thing. It is meant as the exchange format between different CAD tools and should therefore only include the relevant information. Tracks and vias are not necessarily considered relevant as step export is kind of specialized to communicate with mechanical engineers who really do not care about them.

Stepup is different here. It is a tool to directly import kicad files into the CAD tool freecad. It offers much more options for data exchange as it can even push info back to kicad. (Board edges and lately even component position.)

[aguy]

Thanks, that explain a lot, because I’d seen STEP files generated by someone else that had all these features on them, and I assumed they were using STEP export, but I know they use FreeCAD as well.