Component Placement tool with Clearance Constraint tool in Blender

[Schottky]

I've been developing a tool to implement a PCB electrical clearance constraint rule using geometry nodes in Blender. This is useful when creating initial layout and component placement studies especially for high voltage designs. Also, can be used for documentation purposes.

You can see in this video how warnings are displayed when components get too close to each other based on whatever clearance distance is set, also you can visualise the clearance boundaries in 3D, not just in 2D.


For those familiar with Blender's geometry nodes, I first assign components (pins and pads) belonging to the same Net Class to a vertex group, and then use the "distribute nodes on faces" node and the "proximity node" to determine how each point belonging to one vertex group (i.e. Net Class) is further away from another point belonging to another vertex group.


This tool can be more powerful than most pro PCB design software as they only implement clearance rules in 2 dimensions (X&Y) and rely on the footprint pads definition. To use this tool, you will need to have a library of component models in Blender. These models can simply be STL meshes than can be created by any CAD software and then imported into Blender or can be made completely in Blender. I will be making my library of components available soon.

You can see more of work on Twitter/x https://twitter.com/samerps, and some my other posts on this forum https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/renders-and-animations-of-pcbs/

[temperance]

This tool can be more powerful than most pro PCB design software as they only implement clearance rules in 2 dimensions (X&Y) and rely on the footprint pads definition.

Component clearance is defined by a courtyard as defined in IPC 7351. Where the courtyard is a 2D projection of the component itself + PAD's + some clearance. That's how this is implement in most pro PCB design software.