CLOSED - Electronics Design - PCB Workspaces (2D and 3D): Share your feedback

[dvd.mlm]

We’ve shared recent news about the New Electronics Capabilities Coming to Fusion 360.

For overall feedback about the Electronics Workspace in Fusion 360 (such as Electronics Document and 3D PCB Environment) view this discussion board.

Use this thread to share feedback about the PCB Workspaces (2D and 3D), or any of the following sub-topics.

• Creating a new PCB
• Edit Board Shape in 2D and 3D
• Route and Quick Route panels
• Fixing Conflicts
• Edit board and trace colors in CAM Preview

YouTube Channel | Help Documentation

[seonr]

Exciting times!

I've only spent 5 mins with this so  far, but I seem to have no undo capabilities in board mode?  At least for creating and moving board outlines, in both poly and spline mode.

Is this a know issue?

Also, I can't *easily* and how to add my own local libraries, but this mightn't be the right topic for that question.

Cheers,

Seon

Unexpected Maker 

[dbakers71]

I am trying to define a PCB outline from an existing enclosure assembly but it is not acting as expected. Here are my steps and what the results are:

1. In the Enclosure Assembly, I create a new component called PCB and activate it.
2. I create an offset plane from the Enclosure Assembly and create a sketch on that plane
3. I project geometry from the Enclosure Assembly to use for the PCB outline
4. I Create 3D PCB and when I select the profile I created in step 3, a completely new Untitled* tab opens with the 3D PCB workspace showing my new PCB.
5. I would have expected the PCB to be generated in place and only the workspace change to 3D PCB.
6. The sketch is still in the Enclosure Assembly and changing it does not change the new PCB.

This seems like a bug or maybe still in work.

[isedhe]

I have another spin on the issue of working with PCB outlines:

I have an existing PCB design and a model of a new enclosure in which I have to fit the module. So I created an assembly, added the enclosure and the PCB to it and joined them together. Now I want to edit the board outline sketch right from inside the assembly, to project the new mounting hole positions and possibly also project the cases' inside geometry and add an inset/offset for clearance. Those outline changes need to be fed back into the PCB layout. However, I cannot edit the sketch from the assembly, because the PCB is just a linked component. I also tried opening the 3D PCB component itself, in order to add the case as a subassembly there, but that's not possible because the PCB component is "special" and not a normal mechanical part.

Going back and forth between the board layout and an assembly of the PCB together with the enclosure would be THE killer integration that would not work by exporting STEP models from any other PCB tool.

[yqliu]

Hi @dbakers71 , based on our experience and feedback to the old implementation, we are now separating the ECAD design and MCAD design into two documents. I understand that you might feel confused at the beginning if you have already experienced with the old workflow. But no feature is lost and we are getting better performance, and more flexibility.

If you want the new 3D PCB to be placed in the enclosure document, all you need to do is to insert the 3D PCB document into the enclosure document as xref. Because it's xref, you can insert the 3D PCB into other documents too.

Please play with it in different workflows and we are listening to your feedback and suggestions.

[edwin.robledo]

Hi Seon,

It is great to hear from you, thank for participating on the Fusion 360 Electronics forum. We are aware of the UNDO option not working using the keyboard shortcuts. The developing is currently working on this. In the meantime you can click on the Undo option located above the toolbar.

 

To access your local local libraries, consider creating a Project folder and select the upload option to upload the libraries you would like to access.

With the libraries uploaded, return to your Schematic project and click on the ADD command and follow these steps to make your libraries available.

To save a few clicks, type the command 'USE' on the command line.  

Please keep us informed of your progress.

Best Regards,

Ed 

[dbakers71]

If you want the new 3D PCB to be placed in the enclosure document, all you need to do is to insert the 3D PCB document into the enclosure document as xref. 

I tried this but when I made the enclosure larger, the PCB didn't change even though the sketch that the PCB was based on changed. And I can't change the PCB because it is now linked. 

[edwin.robledo]

Hi dbakers71,

Thank you for participating on the Fusion 360 Electronics forum. I think the only step that might have a bit confusion was linking the projected 3D PCB to the 2D PCB. At this time this action is required once the PCB is generated. I made a short video hoping you will be able to follow along. 

Please keep me informed of your progress.

Best Regards,

Edwin

[Cynthia.MacLeod]

Some quick notes from my first run through with moving from Eagle + Fusion to Fusion Electronics Design.

It is not entirely clear what the difference between Switch -> View 3D PCB and View 3D PCB with Canvas is.

My testing seems to suggest PCB with Canvas is like the old Eagle Publish and makes the board simple with texture mapped images of the copper + solder mask + silkscreen as 1. (Similar to the output of the CAM Preview top + bottom images).

The other option seems to export the top and bottom copper layers as individual bodies, and the solder masks as bodies too. I think this means you get much better 3d renders as the copper has 'depth' to it and can probably help with thermal modelling etc.

I am not sure if the copper layer thickness is taken from the loaded design rules or not, and whether the FR4 board thickness is taken from there. I think it should be if it isn't.

I was slightly disappointed not to see the inner layers taken across - both for thermal modelling and to be able to see if the stack-up has any problems; e.g. using the Inspect->Sectional Analysis tool.

It also appears that the render engine (something I have some reservations about) does not take into account the silkscreen texture map; This means that logos, text and other markings do not appear. Again, I think that the silkscreen needs to be taken across as a 'paint' layer.

The process than pushes the 2D to 3D seems very slow at the moment, and causes fusion to go into a not responding state. Waiting normally resolves this but the UI updates seem a bit off here and the integration is a bit clunky still.

I also noticed that changing the cam settings for the solder mask colour in the board design does not seem to mark the document as modified so did not prompt me to save. I am not sure if this is actually stored in the board file.

Again when looking at the CAM processor; selecting the template and processor to use should probably look in the cloud project, either in a global folder for the team, or in the project itself. Once I have edited the CAM job - I should be able to save it in the cloud project so it will be available for other users, or when it needs to be run again for a future revision.

If you have text set to >DRAWING_NAME it does pick up the fusion version number - however, if you save the design and it up-revs, this does not seem to update unless you close and re-open the design.

The layer/location/cli 'bar' does not appear to be taken into account when 'pinning' tool-windows such as the route manual (which if you put it to the left, snaps top left and does not flow very well). This means it is difficult to use these without them getting in the way all the time.

The tool-window also seems to have a lot of space at the bottom below the ok/cancel buttons causing a vertical scrollbar when the window is the 'right height' to show all the contents; and there is no horizontal scrollbar or wrap/flow when it is too narrow.

Again with the design manager/inspector/selection filter tool-windows these are difficult to resize well whether they float or are docked, and when docked but not minimized they are really difficult as there are so many nested levels of scrollbar and no visual separators.

When docked and collapsed the design manager width is very poor by default and the pop-out response time is very slow compared to some of the other tool windows etc.

The layer colour and transparency in board view is really not as clear as that in eagle; I don't know if this is the same default layer colours as the latest eagle or not; but the alpha channel seems way to high. Also, there was no way to import my eagle colour settings. 🙂

Also - an issue which was also in Eagle, but not as noticeable because of the colours - the highlight option in the UI for lighter / darker I had at 81%. When the symbol colour is dark red you can actually see the symbol when you are adding etc. but with it pale orange it is basically invisible. The setting needs to be inverted if you have schematic background set to white and the pcb background set to black (n.b. this setting seems to be confusing as the board black colour isn't black by default.

My only other comment just now is that the ERC and DRC (results) windows really need to be made tool windows too so they can float on top or be docked while you work and they need a refresh button to rerun it without the extra clicks to get the validate section then run the tool. Having to switch between the top level toolbar groups to get to the toolbar options is annoying; especially as there would be more than enough space for them all the same as eagle if they were a sensible size. The net result in fusion is that you loose a huge amount of screen real-estate for no good reason, and end up with many more mouse clicks and movement in general use.

Maybe it is a personal preference thing, but the huge toolbar icons in fusion make it feel a little like a My First CAD toy, rather than something advanced/professional that should be used to design My First ... toys.

One area that I hope will get more work is to include more of the sketch tools into the 2D PCB designer to allow setting positions of components etc. with dimensions and being able to draw the board outline etc. I guess you can do some of that using the reverse workflow and pushing changes down to the 2D editor, but that seems counter-intuitive.

Other than that, I am really excited to start using this integrated version of Eagle and the 3D workflows that are now possible much more easily.

[dbakers71]

Thanks Edwin,

I actually was able to figure out the linking and I just tried it again following the video and it does bring the board profile into the pcb layout properly but now I want to change the 3D PCB based on the original sketch and it isn't working.

Like say after you created your PCB and saved everything than you went into your enclosure "FineTunePlacement v4" and edited that offset from 1mm to 2mm, shouldn't the 3D PCB than change accordingly? If not, how would you make the 3D PCB fit the enclosure?  The Nov 20 keynote shows this working (changing the enclosure changes the board) but it's not working for me.

[rbkyorem]

Atributes edited in schematic are not pushed to board giving consistency errors and breaking forward/backward annotation.

Edit: Attributes are pushed but due to crash on close they were not saved.

Also while i was editing my libraries fusion crashed several times also causing to breake forward/backward annotation.
Recovery files can't fix this issue. 

[dps.lwk]

Be nice if the pallet window size automatically adjusted the width to see all the options for a given tool

I'd also like to just have the option to dock it to a nice narrow toolbar like in EAGEL rather than taking up valuable space over the top of my board view design

Current docketing to the left or right is useless as it sites over the layer switch box of the command line history drop down

Matt

[dps.lwk]

macOS in 2D view the Manufacturing, Fusion 360, Fusion Team buttons are greyed out, missed that they were even there to start with as the tool pallet window was over the top of them

Fusion 360

How they looked in EAGLE

EAGLE

Matt

[TrippyLighting]

I wonder what the proper 3D PCB design workflow is. It seems to be documented nowhere.

1. Create a sketch and fully dimension and constrain it. Normal mechanical CAD workflow.

2. Create->Create 3D PCB opens up a new document and a 3D PCB is created, based on the sketch in the first document, which now can be deleted ? Clunky ?

3. Then, within that new PCB document the user can then create a new Electronics  design from that link to an existing one. 

However, the current implementation is broken.

The sketch in the new 3D PCB document looses all sketch dimensioning  and almost all of the constraints from the original sketch. For a simple rectangle at least the line end coincident constraints are maintained, but using more advanced sketch geometry like a conic curve or a spline, those aren't constrained at all. That is dangerous, particularly for those folks that are coming mainly from Eagle and are not familiar with the usual mechanical CAD workflows and Fusion 360 specifics.

I believe the ideal situation would be to be able to use an existing 3D object to use as a new 3D PCB. This would allow full interactivity between the solid modeling tools in Fusion 360 and the PCB world.

That would get us one step closer to be able to create PCBs like this:

This PCB has 2 more challenges up its sleeve. The three SMD LEDs that sit on the opposite side need to be placed with more precision than the usual grid based tools in Eagle allow. I'd love to be able to use an assembly joint to join an electronic component to the PCB and have the layout reflect the proper pad orientation.

The geometry of this PCB incl. the traces and solder pads and thermal vias for the LEDs were designed in Fusion 360.
The only traces added in a PCB software were those for the IR sensor (on then lower leg in the image).

This was exported as a DXF, imported into CircuitMaker and the line elements were converted into traces or boundaries for copper pours.

Another ability I found in CircuitMaker and which proved to be crucial for this design. Was that the annular rings of a via can have different diameters on each side of a PCB. That was the only way go get a trace out from the center via to the IR sensor.

I co-hosted a Fusion 360 class at AU 2016 and there had a chance to talk to some of the people responsible for Eagle. Great progress has been made since then! I am excited to see how far this has come since then and look forward to the next updates!

[TrippyLighting]

A little bit more testing reveals that conic curves and spines when carried over from the original sketch into the 3D PCB not only loose all constraints, they cannot be edited or constrained anymore. That is truly and horribly broken!

[bigjosh2]

Same question! Put most basically, how do we project geometries onto the board outline sketch? Needed for thinks like locating mounting holes on PCB, sizing the PCB to fit into enclosure, project PCB components onto the outline so that the PCB outline can be sized to contain components + margin, etc. Thanks!

[TrippyLighting]

@bigjosh2 We don't! At least not at this time.

Once the 3D PCB file is created you can edit the sketch, but you have to be very , very careful. The sketch that is created is un-dimensioned - I am assuming so the shape can be driven from the 2D PCP. 

You can add a mounting hole to the 2D PCB and push it back to the 3D PCB and then have the 3D PCB reflect it. that mooting hole is going to populate ht sketch the 3D PCB is based on, but it also is fully un-constrained and un-dimensioned.

You could then project the hole from he PCB into your mechanical design and create the mounting boss based on it, but you cannot really start with the mounting boss in the mechanical design and drive the PCB shape from there.

[kristian.kloften]

Having issues with editing a PCB after creating it from Fusion.

We are doing the following steps:

1. New Design

2. Sketch a rectangle -> Finish sketch

3. Create 3D PCB

4. Edit sketch "Outline" by adding a hole

5. Finish sketch

6. No changes are reflected in the 3D part.

What are we doing wrong?

[TrippyLighting]

I described that in my post above. You can push the initial outline to the 2D PCB but adding a hole needs to be dome in the 2D PCB and then pushed back to the 3D PCB.

At least that's how things look like to me now.

[kristian.kloften]

Thanks for the quick response.

But how are we then going to work with other parts that need to align with the holes we intend to create?

Let`s say I first create the PCB outline, then we add an enclosure part. Now we need to match holes in enclosure with the holes in PCB.

It can`t be the intention that we have to measure and then move to another document to place the holes, and not being able to convert sketch as in usual 3D workflow?