topic Re: PCB outline with dimensions in Fusion Electronics Forum

PCB outline with dimensions

hpekristiansen — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 21:59:21 GMT

I have a PCB, that I want to model in Fusion 360. I do not know how I can add dimensions to a Fusion 360 2D PCB!?

-so I decided to just add dimensions to the "Outline" sketch of the 3D PCB, and then push that to the 2D PCB. There are several things that makes that difficult. When I (push to 2D, save and view 3D) return to the "Outline" sketch, then several constrains and dimensions has disappeared:

I am also having great problems with the holes. My holes are created in the 2D sketch with "BOARD SHAPE"->"Outline Circle". When I try to set dimension and position in the "Outline" sketch of the 3D PCB, I find that they are not circles(but two arcs and a linesegment?) -this makes it difficult to dimension diameter and position:

It does not work to simply draw a circle. How can I best/easiest achieve a fully dimensioned board?

Re: PCB outline with dimensions

jorge_garcia — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 22:48:17 GMT

Hi @hpekristiansen,

I hope you're doing well. See the answer to question 5 on this thread https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-360-electronics/how-to-work-with-3d-pcb/td-p/9278497 for how to make the holes.

You can't use constrained dimensions on the 2D PCB editor yet, so using the sketching tools in the 3D space is the preferred way to do it.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Re: PCB outline with dimensions

hpekristiansen — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 07:13:28 GMT

Thank you - that is a perfect workaround for the strange hole made by the 2D PCB.

Do you know why many of the constrains and dimensionsions from the "Outline" 3D sketch disappears?

(When pushing to 2D and going back to 3D)

Re: PCB outline with dimensions

yqliu — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 07:47:51 GMT

Hi @hpekristiansen , we have got a fix to the hole issue and the fix will be included in the next update.

I will try to explain the constrains and dimensions issue.

Firstly, in the electronics design environment of Fusion, there is no concept of constraints. If you make any change to the geometries, PCB doesn't know how to maintain the constraints. And some users like to put a part of the outline in a package, which makes it very hard or impossible to constraint the curves.

Secondly, you can see that the geometries in 3D PCB are not exactly the same with the 2D PCB (more realistic), this is because there is a translation process and because of this, we can't build a 1-1 relationship between the 2D and 3D.

We know the constraints are very helpful to design a sketch, so we are trying hard to keep them during the roundtrip between 2D and 3D and we are still improving it.

Richard