Solder Mask Gone after Pushing Board from Eagle to Fusion360

[Amyoqzy]

I am working with the Eagle/Fusion360 synchronisation. After pushing a board back to Eagle, the solder mask is gone and the board looks somehow strange.

The board in eagle looks like this:

eagle-board.png

The board in Fusion360 looks like this:

Show_Flake_C_2017-Sep-22_09-14-23AM-000_CustomizedView1731249337.png

The complete solder mask is missing. Also the tStop areas, where no solder mask should be are white on this orange layer. All in all it doesn't look as it should look like.

Is this a bug? How can I fix this?

Best,

Amyoqzy

[rachaelATWH4]

Hello,

Turn off all your layers in EAGLE except tStop and have a look at what this is showing. Is it showing a filled polygon or just the outline? I suspect EAGLE correctly has just the white line around the perimeter on the tStop layer but when it is being pushed back to Fusion it is being detected as a closed shape and defining a polygon on that layer going back in that direction. If this is the case you could prove it by changing the outline slightly in EAGLE so it no longer forms a closed shape and push it back to Fusion again. If this works then I think they'll have to sort something out to better cater for this use case.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[Amyoqzy]

only-tstop.png

Indeed, there are closed lines. But all of them are "wires", no polygons. The image above shows only the tStop layer for the whole board.

[rachaelATWH4]

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@Amyoqzy wrote:

Indeed, there are closed lines. But all of them are "wires", no polygons. The image above shows only the tStop layer for the whole board.

---

This is what I thought would be the case, so to prove it's an issue with the push back to Fusion incorrectly converting the closed outline on tStop to a polygon, change one small section so it's no longer closed and push it back to fusion. I expect your solder mask will reappear.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[Amyoqzy]

I am sure, this workaround would solve the problem.

But I like to wait for this bug fixed rather than change my design to avoid bugs. 🙂

[rachaelATWH4]

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@Amyoqzy wrote:

I am sure, this workaround would solve the problem.

But I like to wait for this bug fixed rather than change my design to avoid bugs. 🙂

---

That's fine, and I am not suggesting you change your design to avoid the problem, I'm simply suggesting you try it to prove that this is the problem. Then the Autodesk support team can take this up with their development team and get it fixed.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[jorge_garcia]

Hi Amyoqzy,

I don't think there's a problem here, at least none that I can see. The orange color comes from the top polygon you have in your board, the above image shows the silkscreen outline overlapping the copper as it should. Whenever you have a big surface polygon like in the case above you don't get the stop mask drawn on it. This is how it is currently working for all boards that way you get a clear view of the polygon fill in Fusion.

Let me know if perhaps I have misunderstood something.

Best Regards,

[rachaelATWH4]

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@jorge.garcia wrote:
Hi Amyoqzy,

The orange color comes from the top polygon you have in your board

---

I think this is the problem. My impression of the OP's problem was that wasn't intended to be a polygon it's meant to be an outline not a filled area. That was my understanding anyway, I could be wrong.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[Amyoqzy]

Hi Jorge

Indeed, it seems you misunderstood the problem. Here an image how the board actually should look like:

snowflake.png

There are no (zero) polygons on the tStop layer, just lines (wires) in different widths which form a decorative pattern. The picture above is the final design which is currently in production. It will look exactly like this.

fusion-view.png

This is how it looks in Fusion.

• The wires seems to be interpreted as polygons, but they aren't polygons.
• The other tStop elements on top of the exposed copper shouldn't visible in this case. Because you can only expose the copper layer once.

There are more problems with the Fusion360 view. The copper pours around curved routes are nor rendered correctly. The copper pours do not follow the rules defined in Eagle. It seems they follow some unknown rules.

Best regards,

Amyoqzy

[jorge_garcia]

Hi Amyoqzy,

Thanks for the clarification, I think I finally got it. I've asked the developer that works on this feature to come on here and take look. Those lines on the tStop layer are meant let the copper on the top of the board show through forming a decoration right?

Since Fusion360 doesn't currently draw stop mask that explains the failure and why it may appear to look like silkscreen. Thanks for your comments.

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

Best Regards,

[Amyoqzy]

Hi Jorge,

---

Since Fusion360 doesn't currently draw stop mask that explains the failure and why it may appear to look like silkscreen.

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I do not understand your statement. It seems the stop mask and parts of the tStop layer are actually visible on the board. If Fusion360 would not draw the tStop layer, they shouldn't be visible, isn't it?

So, are you working on a solution to correctly render the board layout from Eagle?

Best regards,

Amyoqzy

[Anonymous]

"Since Fusion360 doesn't currently draw stop mask that explains the failure and why it may appear to look like silkscreen. Thanks for your comments."

In other words, if I understand it correctly, it is possible to export a design out of Eagle to F360, and then back to Eagle, and parts of it may get destroyed, and it is that was because it is implemented that way? There are all kinds of important tricks with solder masks and stop masks.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi Amyoqzy,

I hope you're doing well. What I meant is that you don't see any green solder mask covering the top of your board like you would in a real board . Since Fusion doesn't draw the green goo like you would have on a real board the stop layers don't render properly. I've brought the issue to our developers and they will be working on it.

[david.g.johnson]

is there any way to up-vote this feature? I use ground plane a lot and when brought into fusion without solder mask rendered, it appears almost entirely copper. which doesnt really represent the board accurately.

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @david.g.johnson,

You just did 😉 Our ECAD-MCAD team is working on this, they have been since this was first reported. The combo of EAGLE and Fusion is unprecedented in how tightly the mechanical and the electrical world are integrated. When breaking new ground, you are going to smash a few toes... We are working diligently on this so stay tuned.

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

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

I seem to be having the same issue. See attached images.

amp.jpgScreen Shot 2018-02-01 at 10.33.33 pm.png

[Anonymous]

That's nice to hear @jorge_garcia. The current rendering method for PCBs in Fusion would be greatly improved if it handled soldermask rendering accurately as these fine people have shown. So if my comment here is an "upvote" as well, count us in.

As an aside, is there any plan on the roadmap to allow changing the colour of soldermask and other layer elements in the Fusion PCB render? Many of us do not use green for our PCB colour...

[jorge_garcia]

HI @Anonymous,

The manufacturing preview in EAGLE supports using a different soldermask color, so I'm sure Fusion360 will support alternate colors at some point. There are a lot of other fixes that take precedence right now, but at some point that will be addressed.

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

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

That's pretty cool. Thanks for the info Jorge. Looking forward to that! 

Perhaps a bit off topic, but when in manufacturing preview mode, it seems I can't get it to display a preview using whatever layers I have shown/hidden in Eagle. Do I have to actually run the CAM processor first, selecting the layers for output, before going to manufacturing preview mode to see the proper representation of the layers I have selected/deselected?

For example, it always shows the default tPlace and tNames as the silkscreen in the preview, but what if I want the preview to show tPlace and some other layer for the silkscreen preview?

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @Anonymous,

Currently the layers used by the manufacturing preview window are hard coded at some point we want to add the ability to adjust that but currently you can't switch them.

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

Best Regards,