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After seeing what you guys managed to do with wood I'd love it if you could make a simple (or complex if you wish) Printed Circuit Board material/appearance. So that it could be used to better indicate a typical or nominal circuit board without going into too much detail and downloading models or drawing something to give that effect.
Would also be nice to have a bump map with some componentry on there (i.e. basic chips and whatnot) to give it some depth, but I think I might be asking too much....Ha.
Eagle actually has a (not free) STEP exporter / F360 plugin and I think Altium can export its 3D PCB assembly models. Haven't done a tight enough design that I need that yet so I normally just do 1.6mm thick rectangular prisms with bigger components hand modeled in. Not super pretty but gets the job done.
I'm sure there's a way to get it out of 123d Circuits also (I don't have access to Eagle or Altium presently) and agree that putting the compnents on is probaby overkill. I was thinking more for rendering purposes rather than working out tolerances and offsets.
I recently entered a competition on GrabCAD and there was a nominal size for the componentry so didn't need to take into account any oversize pieces but would have been nice in the exploded view to show some detail without having to go to the trouble of creating something.
As I understand this company/ technology is now under the Autodesk umbrella, and is progressing towards being a path for e-CAD to M-CAD integration. I've used it a bit, and while the parts libraries are a little limited at present it's on the way to being integrated with Fusion.
Yeah that's what I was talking about with Eagle integration. It's subscription based and a bit clunky especially compared to Altium but I'm sure it gets the job done if you absolutely need rough models of your assembled boards and can't afford Altium
It would be nice if there were better integration between systems. In our case, we use Altium for schematic capture, but we don’t do layout for our (complex) boards in house. We contract it out to someone who specializes in that aspect. Our preferred designer uses PADS. I’m going back and forth trying to provide mechanical positioning guidance and check fits. I was hopeful that ecad would provide an easy clearing house for this shuffle, and that seems to be the intent. It’s not there yet, but I haven’t had any trouble importing board files from either Altium or PADS into ecad, and the results into Fusion.
Having an integration with some PCB software would be nice. In the meantime, I believe a good approx of PCBs is possible with the existing Layered material.
I did this starting from the Carbon Fiber material, and creating 2 textures in Photoshop, one for the bump, and one for the circuit color.
Let's keep the discussion going. 🙂
We can add a preset for something like the above, and then you can replace your own textures (like we did for the LCD screens presets).
@zicher2, love what you managed to achieve there!! With a few colour variations that would probably be sufficient fo the indicative feel I was trying to achieve, problem is I don't have access to Photoshop.
I agree with everybody's sentiments that integration with PCB software is probably the best way forward, however that would likely be a longer lead time development-wise (at least I think) than creating a preset like the one you have made in the same vein as the LCD screens.
Many PCB design software packages now have STEP export now, granted some are paid while others are integrated (Diptrace, Kicad, Eagle, Altium...). The "old" PCB to MCAD file format is IDF, which I believe most major PCB design suites offer, is something I have never seen amazing support and sometimes requires a paid add-on.
Adding IDF import could be a big help bridging design of PCB and MCAD. This is mentioned here as well.
@colin.smith Appreciate this being marked for future consideration and believe that ultimately the integration of ECAD would be an amazing extension of Fusions already extensive capabilities.
However in the meantime something like @zicher2 was proposing with a built-in material preset would be a simple solution that could be rolled out sooner and utilised by more people. Reasons for this are:
not everyone has access to external software
not everyone has the ability to create detailed PCB's in said software
time constraints are a factor - how much time would you spend making something for a render versus creating fully realised PCB designs
quite often indicative representations would suffice as per renders or drawings
Hope this is taken into account and look forward to seeing it come to fruition.
Hi @lokiidesigns, sorry my response was not more clear. We intend to do both. In the short term @zicher2 (aka Roberto - who creates materials for Autodesk) will make a preset PCB material similar to what he showed in his post. Release is TBD right now but I assume it would be in the next couple releases. In the longer term we are integrating with ECAD software.
@colin.smith when you do that, please add at least few standard solder mask colors (green, red, black, blue, purple), silkscreen colors, and copper traces / ENIG / etc would be nice too - gold gold is pretty far off
@roambotics_scott, do you have an image(s) that shows what you are looking for? It would be helpful for reference when the materials are being designed.
@colin.smith, thanks for clearing it up....I am very happy to hear that both options will be getting a guernsey in this instance! I look forward to seeing what @zicher2 comes up with, the initial concept stuff looked pretty darn good!
Reviving this old thread because I'm curious if this was ever implemented and where I can access it in Fusion 360. There are no models in the appearances section for PCBs. Been 2 years and I figure there would be some headway made. Thank you!
I'm also seeing that CFD has a PCB material option for simulations. Will the future Fustion updates include specs for PCB thermal simulations? Is this already an option?
Has anyone done PCB thermal simulations in Fusion? How did you model the PCB?
