I’m working on the presentation of an open source project i’ve been working on, so I’m looking for a way to make a high quality render of the viewport or export the current view as a vector image while retaining the net colors and other layers.
The way i do it right now is by making a screenshot, then cropping and resizing the image, but the quality is horrible. I am trying to do achieve the same thing in FreeCAD because i want the “wireframe” to be visible for aesthetic reasons.
Easy…
In FreeCAD, set your image on the screen as you want it (wireframe, asis, shaded…etc). And, if desired, set the line widths and colors.
Zoom in/out to get the desired size (most likely, fill the display. Why? Keep reading…)
Now, to make the image:
Tools>Save_Picture (you’ll get what’s displayed!)
Click the Extended button in the panel and set to desired size and background…
Tools > Save Picture is exactly what i did, but the image it produces has the same resolution as my display so the quality degrades when i zoom in. Same problem with KiCAD.
I was hoping there is a way to somehow “export” the current view with all visible layers.
I know how to export single layers, so i can probably combine them in GIMP or some similar software but i was wondering if there is a way to retain the “net color”
Below is an image of a single layer, exported as SVG, colored in Inkscape and then saved as PNG
I did not know about this option actually, or at least it wasn’t working the last time i tried it, but it produces a realistic 3D model of the board, i actually want to keep the “viewport look” from my screenshot, but in HQ instead.
In the FreeCAD Tools>Save_Picture, after clicking Extended, you get a panel with list of default screens sizes. There’s more size options… I imagine 10000x10000 is good enough
Awesome,
Thank you, i can’t try it out right now but i think this is exactly what i am looking for.
Do you know if there is something similar in KiCAD?
This will give me another 3D view of the board,
Besides the 3D “FreeCAD Viewport/Wireframe” view, i want to export the PCBNew’s viewport look as a HQ image, so i can assemble the same image i shared at the top, but in high quality
I’m very sorry, i know it’s probably a weird request
You can use the plugin Board2Pdf (found in the plugin manager) to get different 2D views of any combination of layers you’d like. The result is a pdf in vector format, so you should be able to export that pdf to a really high resolution image.
