Author Topic: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?  (Read 33508 times)

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Offline firewalkerTopic starter

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KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« on: February 24, 2014, 06:49:41 pm »
Does anyone knows if the is a schedule for realistic 3d in KiCAD? I have seen some project that adds this feature to pcbnew.

Alexander.
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Offline free_electron

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #1 on: February 24, 2014, 06:54:36 pm »
and the usefullness of such a thing is what exactly ?

there's plenty of real problems to be fixed first
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Offline firewalkerTopic starter

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #2 on: February 24, 2014, 07:19:56 pm »
For me? None. It  is for my students.

Useful would be to use the 3d rendering to another program. To combine with a case etc.

Alexander.
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Offline free_electron

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #3 on: February 24, 2014, 07:46:13 pm »
rendering are useless. you need dimension accurate step files to do any kind of mechanical work.
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Offline firewalkerTopic starter

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2014, 07:49:43 pm »
This is what I wanted to say. But couldn;t recall the "STEP".

Alexander.
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Online Mechatrommer

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2014, 12:17:10 am »
rendering are useless. you need dimension accurate step files to do any kind of mechanical work.
i believe any 3d format can be made "dimension accurate". rendering is just that, rendering.
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline free_electron

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2014, 12:43:18 am »
rendering is making a pretty picture. those are useless ( apart from putting them in marketing material )
what we need is mechabnical CAD integration: being able to export and import 3d objects,p place them relative to footprints and export the placed and routed assembly back to the mechanical CAD domain.

The prevalent format for this is either STEP or IGES format.
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Offline AlfBaz

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2014, 12:57:03 am »
meh... Isometric drawings are for wimps. Don't even get me started with the 3D pussies  ;D
 

Online Mechatrommer

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2014, 11:41:33 am »
rendering is making a pretty picture. those are useless ( apart from putting them in marketing material )
so you admitted its not entirely useless :P

...import 3d objects,p place them relative to footprints and export...
looking at KiCAD style and trend (divide and conquer for each element) you are looking at another beast that deserves a place next to those eeschema, cvpcb and pcbnew buttons.
Nature: Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness (Stephen L. Talbott): Its now indisputable that... organisms “expertise” contextualizes its genome, and its nonsense to say that these powers are under the control of the genome being contextualized - Barbara McClintock
 

Offline ConnorGames

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #9 on: February 26, 2014, 12:52:28 am »
I know it's not exactly what you are looking for, but I made this based off a kicad board in blender... It took hours though, more of a "because I can" project than a "Because I actually need to" project  ;D

EDIT:
You can use file>export>VRML. This used to export ugly meshes (As in, "combine the tracks into one object? Nahh, we'll gust export each segment as its own object!") in previous versions, but with the latest builds (I have BZR 4643 built from source) it looks like it produces a relatively clean and usable mesh -- give it a try. Even if you have an older build, it might still be usable for your purposes. If you want a sample STL or blend file I could upload one.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2014, 02:08:03 am by ConnorGames »
 

Offline doctormord

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #10 on: December 23, 2014, 08:15:13 am »
rendering are useless.

Even this is an old thread, and my posting would be "useless"  :box:, i just wanted to show my efforts to link KiCAD to POV-Ray using some modified Eagle-3D scripts.
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Offline AlfBaz

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #11 on: December 23, 2014, 08:53:35 am »
Nice :-+
 

Offline Rerouter

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2014, 09:07:25 am »
I have not updated for a while, but any silkscreen drawings or text you add are shown in the 3D View, not quite on topic, but something i myself only recently found out,
 

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #13 on: December 23, 2014, 10:15:43 am »
Even this is an old thread, and my posting would be "useless"  :box:, i just wanted to show my efforts to link KiCAD to POV-Ray using some modified Eagle-3D scripts.

That is really nice!!!
 

Offline firewalkerTopic starter

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #14 on: December 23, 2014, 12:21:53 pm »
Very nice job! Could you giv us some extra infos?

Alexander.
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Offline doctormord

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #15 on: December 23, 2014, 03:13:21 pm »
I have not updated for a while, but any silkscreen drawings or text you add are shown in the 3D View, not quite on topic, but something i myself only recently found out,

This can be switched of in the latest BZW builds. (Not sure if it works in stable BZR4022).

Very nice job! Could you giv us some extra infos?
Alexander.

The first step is to export the "Module Position File (.pos)". To have everything within, the parts used in the circuit must have the attributes "Normal + Insert". (Module Properties)

This will give something like:

Code: [Select]
### Module positions - created on 23/12/2014 06:44:23 ###
### Printed by Pcbnew version pcbnew (2013-07-07 BZR 4022)-stable
## Unit = mm, Angle = deg.
## Side : F.Cu
# Ref    Val                  Package         PosX       PosY        Rot     Side
R24      10k              0402_HD_RES        10.2000    42.3000     180.0    F.Cu
U1       TPA3132D2        TPA3132D2           9.7000    34.9500     270.0    F.Cu
## End

We care about PosX/PosY/Rot(ation) and package.

This then will be translated into Eagle3D macros than POV-Ray can render, so for the 2 parts here:

Code: [Select]
object {RES_SMD_CHIP_0402("10k",)rotate<0,180,0> translate<10.2,0,42.3> translate<0,0.035000,0>} //R24
object {IC_SMD_MLF_32_050MM("TPA3132D2")rotate<0,270,0> translate<9.7,0,34.95> translate<0,0.035000,0>} //U1

For the parser to work, the parts needs to be named correctly (i actually did everything by hand)

The pcb itself is rendered from GERBER data (screenshot) with an alpha-channel to set the mask on a "BOX":

Code: [Select]
box{
    <0,0,0> <50,50,1.6>
    texture{
        pigment{
            image_map{
png "D:\test_copper_red.png"
map_type 0
interpolate 2
//filter 255, 1.0
once}
            scale <50,50,1>}
finish {
ambient 0.1
diffuse 0.3
specular 0.01
roughness .001
reflection {0.2, 0.1 metallic}}       
        }
        rotate <90,0,0>
        translate<0,0,0>
        translate<-17.2,0,15.5>
}

Most (old) infos are shown here (german):

https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mikrocontroller.net%2Ftopic%2F114555

I made a package available in the past to start with:

http://www.mikrocontroller.net/topic/114555?page=2#3032004

Because the pcb is just an image, there will be no real drills nor vias and pads at the moment. (So automatic solder generation wont work)

Edit:

I'm actually playing with PoseRay to get valid board data from VRML.

« Last Edit: December 23, 2014, 03:38:28 pm by doctormord »
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Offline doctormord

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #16 on: December 23, 2014, 08:03:09 pm »
Having some data extracted from the VRML gives a nice drilled board, but the soldermask is wrong in some way (via restring).

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Offline steve_w

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #17 on: February 10, 2015, 10:30:19 am »
Nice
So long and thanks for all the fish
 

Offline JohnnyBerg

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #18 on: February 10, 2015, 10:40:15 am »
This is how it looks on the latest release (BZR 5376):

 

Offline JohnnyBerg

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #19 on: February 10, 2015, 10:47:59 am »
And a zoom:

 

Offline nickoe

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #20 on: April 03, 2015, 10:15:17 pm »
rendering is making a pretty picture. those are useless ( apart from putting them in marketing material )
what we need is mechabnical CAD integration: being able to export and import 3d objects,p place them relative to footprints and export the placed and routed assembly back to the mechanical CAD domain.

The prevalent format for this is either STEP or IGES format.

If you wand to see STEP and IGES support, please respond to Cirilo's request:

https://lists.launchpad.net/kicad-developers/msg17386.html
 

Offline easyw

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #21 on: October 09, 2015, 07:52:00 pm »
rendering is making a pretty picture. those are useless ( apart from putting them in marketing material )
what we need is mechabnical CAD integration: being able to export and import 3d objects,p place them relative to footprints and export the placed and routed assembly back to the mechanical CAD domain.

The prevalent format for this is either STEP or IGES format.
Hi, if you are interested in MCAD integration / collaboration with kicad ECAD you could find useful the script I developed to export kicad pcb and assemblies to mechanical CAD, maintaining the 3D rendering perfectly aligned to the mechanical assembly.
The hack is done by a python script and the recent version of FreeCAD (>=0.15) ...
The result is a STEP model with color and mechanical objects matching completely the 3D aesthetic rendering.
The nicest thing is that you can obtain this feature just with the new standard and official stable kicad version.
To model your parts you can use the standard STEP models obtained from manufacturers or libraries or just model your parts in FreeCAD or whatever MCAD software you may prefer.
The script is Open Source and works in Windows, Linux and OSX
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/
Here is an example of a kicad board and modules converted to STEP:

« Last Edit: October 09, 2015, 07:53:53 pm by easyw »
 

Offline timofonic

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #22 on: October 11, 2015, 05:25:29 pm »
Nice stuff!

Are there plans to integrate it further in the future? What are the KiCad scripting abilities compared with other EDA software? And easy to make scripts?
 

Offline easyw

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #23 on: October 11, 2015, 11:05:30 pm »
Hi @Circuiteromalaguito,

kicad developer are planning to integrate IGES and possibly STEP models directly in the 3D viewer, as a plugin, but when this will be available it difficult to say... for sure it will not be available for the upcoming stable release.

Kicad scripting at the moment is available only for pcbnew and there are some nice scripts to generate footprints for DIP, QFP, BGA ...
they will be available under New Footprint wizard.

The used language is python, so it is quite easy to modify or make a script... scripting doc is a lacking feature...

Anyway, kicad comes with human readable format, so it is possible to script something from outside (e.g. build a panelized PCB)...

Moreover, talking of kicad StepUp script, the script is an external tool for kicad and it is written in python ...
It reads the kicad_pcb board and converts it to a mechanical model that can be used in any MCAD software.
And you can do also the opposite... if you add an enclosure to your mechanical design, you can display that also in kicad 3D viewer, matching exactly what you'll get in mechanical environment:
bi-directional collaboration between ECAD and MCAD worlds!
 
The workflow is very simple and maintains the usual way of working in kicad.
With kicad StepUp script, kicad has now a true parametric 3D MCAD collaboration tool that put beside the 3D photo-realistic rendering of all board elements
and everything is achieved with a single command...
One other 'STEP' ahead to compete with the big ones :)
Maurice
 

Offline easyw

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Re: KiCAD photo realistic 3D rendering?
« Reply #24 on: February 13, 2016, 11:22:25 pm »
Hi,
I just developed a new Macro to export VRML models from FreeCAD in a smaller size and with a kicad and Blender compatibility...
That Macro will be included in the new kicad StepUp GUI coming soon at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/kicadstepup/
here the 3D photorealist result :)
 


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