Drawings generated from 3D PCB lack silk screen layer.

[gmdouglas]

I've created a PCB in Fusion 360, then pushed it to a 3d PCB, and created a drawing from that 3d geometry.

It's all very nice, but I can't find a way to have the PCB silk screen show up in the drawing.

How do I add the silk screen as a layer or other entity?  Drawings without this information are not very useful for generating documentation for an electronics design.

Thanks~

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @AwiIngo ,

I think you have done everything correctly here. I think this is perhaps an oversight in the drawing implementation since the Drawings should reflect whatever is on the 3D PCB. I'll create a ticket for this.

@LloydTravisSmith , The visibility of the silkscreen layers in the 2D PCB has no bearing on the 3D PCB. If you look in the Drawings environment browser there you can control the visibility of the reference designators. See the image below

The 3D PCB has something similar

Let me know if there's anything more I can do for you either of you.

Best Regards,

[kterryTYYYC]

Excellent demonstration! This is exactly what I'm seeing as well. It's very frustrating. I've had to resort to screen captures for some of my production procedure drawings.

[atticus_morse]

I'm having an issue after the latest update where I'm unable to hide the silkscreen text in exploded views of drawings. The first photo shows what can be accessed in non-exploded views, and there is a file specifically for silkscreen text which can be hidden. This is nested within the PCB component, whereas before the update it was in the top level of the assembly, and was only called "Reference Designators". 

However, an exploded view in the same drawing does not have this new silkscreen file, so I cannot hide the text. The text itself is not visible in the 3D model either, as I've hidden everything except the board itself. 

The final exploded view does show a mess of silkscreen text, however.

I was wondering if there is a way to hide this that I can't find in the new update, or if this is something that has been overlooked?

[gmdouglas]

I've been having this problem too -- and frankly it's a huge mess (I've had 6 hard crashes on OSX just trying to update drawings to reflect the current PCB). 

We should be able to define which layers from the PCB are shown as the silk screen on the drawing in a more concise way (there's a deeply hidden implicit way, but it's hard to trust that it doesn't break other things like manufacturing the PCB).

Drawing layers/behavior should be clearly laid out in design rules - and absolutely explicit -- it should at the very least just ask for the project's CAM job to generate the drawing with -- that way the drawing might actually MATCH the as-built PCB.  

[atticus_morse]

I am also unable to hide the silkscreen, even with the entire PCB suppressed, leaving me absolutely no way to have an acceptable drawing. 

[sdpatil]

Hi @atticus_morse and @gmdouglas ,

Thank you for reporting these issues, and apologies for the inconvenience caused.

We’ve been able to reproduce and confirm the following:

1. Drawings created from the Animation workspace do not include Silkscreen and its related browser nodes.
2. When a PCB is hidden in an assembly, the Reference Designators and Silkscreen elements still appear in the drawing canvas. This behavior differs from drawings created directly from 3D PCBs, where it works as expected.

We’ve logged internal tickets for both issues and have started working on fixes. We’ll keep you updated on progress.

Workaround for issue #2:
You can hide all Silkscreen-related browser nodes (Reference Designators, Values, and Other Silkscreen) and uncheck the inserted PCB component node. This will remove the PCB along with its Silkscreen elements from the drawing, helping achieve a cleaner assembly view for now.

Please let us know if you have any further questions or need assistance.

Thank you for your patience.

[atticus_morse]

Regarding the workaround for issue #2, that does not work. If you uncheck the inserted PCB component (suppress the PCB) then the reference text of the PCB is still visible, as in this photo. 

I'm going to continue posting examples of my issues with this until it is fixed, because this is an unacceptable step backwards for Fusion. Today I found a non-exploded view in a drawing which shows the silkscreen text, even when it is hidden, and the entire PCB is suppressed.

[atticus_morse]

Today I found an exploded view of an ASM that uses PCBs, but the PCBs are hidden in this exploded view. There is no way for me to make them visible in the drawing, as is typical for exploded views. However, even though those PCBs are completely suppressed, the silkscreen text is still visible.

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @atticus_morse ,

I've pinged the developers on this. Thank you for all of the reports you are posting.

Best Regards,

[atticus_morse]

Today, I'm bringing up an old problem with silkscreen text; It doesn't actually follow the PCB model. If you move the PCB in an exploded view, the text will remain where the PCB started, making the drawing that much more confusing. I could look beyond this before though, when it was possible for us to hide the text at all. 

[jorge_garcia]

Hello @atticus_morse ,

I hope you're doing well. I've pinged the developers on this and they will continue to review.

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

Best Regards,

[jorge_garcia]

Hi @atticus_morse ,

I hope you're doing well. I got a response from the developers, these things should be resolved in the next insider release. So if you are part of Fusion Insider you would have access to it shortly. Otherwise it will be in the next major release of Fusion.

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

Best Regards,

[sdpatil]

Thanks @jorge_garcia for taking care of this while the dev team was working on a fix. Yes, the fix is already out with the Insider release which is out there today. I hope it will help.

[ajay_krishna_t_s]

Hi @atticus_morse @gmdouglas 

Thank you for reporting this issue and for your patience while we investigated it. The issue related to the ECAD drawing silkscreen has now been fixed. The fix is available in the Fusion Insider release for May, so if you are using the Insider build, you should be able to try it out and confirm the behavior. For users on the regular production version of Fusion, this fix will be included in the official May release.

Sorry for the inconvenience this caused, and I appreciate your understanding. Please let us know if you continue to see any issues after updating.