Syncing the Arduino Uno board to Fusion 360 but no 3D models

[espenrs]

I imported the original Arduino Uno board and schematic to EAGLE and synced it to Fusion 360. Everything went smoothly even for a newbie like me - I watched part 1/2 of the latest getting started videos on YouTube yesterday 🙂

I expected the board to be populated with at least some 3D models but there was none.

Am I missing something or are there really no 3D models available for the components on the Arduino Uno?

[jorge_garcia · Accepted solution]

Hello @espenrs,

I hope you're doing well. There's nothing wrong, the Arduino UNO does not have any 3D models mapped by default. There currently aren't many public managed libraries and for something like the Arduino UNO to be fully mapped would require a public managed library. Additionally, the Arduino team would have to take the time to map the design out.

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

Best Regards,

[espenrs]

Hi Jorge,

Thank you.

I don't know exactly how this work, but I thought that simple resistors and capacitors at least would have some sort of 3D representation based on the footprints.

Very much looking forward to the announced webinar about the library and creating new parts. I hope it will have a session about creating 3D components for new and existing parts also. 🙂

[rachaelATWH4 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

So by default existing EAGLE designs will not automatically pull in 3D models as Jorge has said. This is because they don't contain the information required to pull in the 3D assets in the Fusion 360 environment. This is where EAGLE's "Managed Libraries" functionality comes into play. This is basically the mechanism which allows you to assign 3D models to footprints and is done by having a 3D package / footprint pair to maintain the association and then these are assigned assed ID's (URN) which are stored in your EAGLE file and recognised by Fusion 360.

So, I decided to have a go at making the Arduino UNO a 3D enabled board (within my system as the 3D assets are in my libraries) and this is the result:

So, how did I do this?

The first thing I had to do was create "managed" versions of all the parts in the board to enable me to map 3D models to the footprints. I did this by exporting the libraries used in the schematic to a single library and then used the replace script to make the design reference this library.

From the library editor I then converted this into a new managed library. Now, before doing anything else I needed to make sure the design referred to the new managed version of the library and not the (now deleted) original so from the board editor I did Library->Update all...

So now I have a board which contains the original design exactly as it was but now there are a bunch of placeholders in the library where I can assign 3D models. What now?

Here's where the real work starts. There are two ways to get 3D models into parts:

1) Use the (excellent!) IPC package generator.

2) Upload STEP models.

I used a combination of the two here, but mostly STEP models. There are lots of resources online but I managed to find almost everything I needed from 3DContentCentral and Digikey. Some manufacturers are also great at providing 3D resources so it's always a good idea to check out the manufacturer websites too if needs be.

So one by one I edited the 3D packages in the new managed library and uploaded STEP models or generated models. There are some exceptions like test points where I just edited it and clicked on the "Remove Model" button so it wouldn't whinge in the translation to Fusion 360 and wouldn't have the unwanted red boxes.

After my library parts all had models mapped I did a Library->Create new version... to push all the assigned assets to the cloud.

The final step is to go to the board and do another Library->Update all... which will update the design to use the latest version of all the library parts. This will add in all the required references to the 3D assets which are required for Fusion 360 to see them.

Now when you push to Fusion 360 you'll see your board in all it's three dimensional glory 🙂

Best Regards,

Rachael

[espenrs]

Wow, you made it seem so easy 🙂

Of course I don't know most of what you did, but that won't stop me trying. A great learning experience.

[rachaelATWH4]

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@espenrs wrote:

Wow, you made it seem so easy 🙂

It's easy when you know how but it does require a little bit of work to map all the models to the footprints. Once you've done it a couple of times you'll find it easy too 🙂

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@espenrs wrote:

Of course I don't know most of what you did, but that won't stop me trying. A great learning experience.

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That's great, give it a go and see where you get to and if you get stuck just post up and I'll give you pointers as to what you need to do or where it's going wrong.

Best Regards,

Rachael