Hi,
I’m designing some footprints and 3D models. Everything is fine as long as I use STEP files. But WRL files don’t display in footprint > properties > 3D.
Workflow :
part design in Solidworks ; everything is properly aligned at this point (origin and planes), and the 3D model is natively aligned with the footprint
STEP export from Solidworks (STEP AP214 otherwise there’s no color) ; the part is displayed where it has to be in KiCad.
STEP is opened in FreeCAD (Ok)
export to WRL, the file can be read with FreeCad and view3Dscene, but not in KiCad
My library hyerarchy is (Windows) :
Documents -> KiCad -> Libraries
-----------------------------------------------> footprints
----------------------------------------------------------------> sub directories
-----------------------------------------------> lib
-----------------------------------------------> packages3d
----------------------------------------------------------------> sub directories
Then, I tried to export using KiCad stepup -> this action crashes FreeCad
I’m stuck there.
What am I doing wrong, and are VRML files really needed (it seems to me that the KiCad documentation says it is… https://kicad.org/libraries/klc/F9.3/)
1 - calculations take ages (model with many faces and vertices)
2 - I’m on a quad head PC, and some dialogs poped up on another monitor, under other windows while I was searching on the web : I couldn’t see them and the task manager was showing FreeCad as “high activity” and “not responding”.
I killed FreeCad many times, before I realized what was happening !
Everything’s perfectly fine. If models are properly created in SW (coordinate system), no further alignments are needed. (I’m setting up my workflow).
With SW, parts and assemblies have to be created with the front plane as PCB top, and oriented. according to the footprint (left, right, top and bottom on the screen). SW does not export usable WRML files ; StepUp does. There are some glitches in KiCad with STEP files (exported from FreedCad and SW), not with WRL ones.