Holes (NPTH) don't appear on 3D PCB

[Anonymous]

I have created a library for a connector that has mounting lugs to "snap" into holes on a PCB. In the library I've modelled these as "Hole (NPTH) and I have PTH pads for the pins.

In my project using this library, all looks well in the 2D PCB document. However, the NPTH holes do not appear in the 3D PCB document. The PTH pads are correctly shown as holes.

2D PCB:

3D PCB (packages hidden for clarity):

[yqliu]

Hello @Anonymous , can you export the pcb file and share it with me?

[Anonymous]

Hi @yqliu 

See attached .zip for the 2D, 3D PCB and the library.

By the way, .flbr and .fbrd file types are not accepted as attachments.

[yqliu]

Hi @Anonymous , Thank you for sharing your design from which I finally found out what is wrong. This is indeed a limitation of the derive.  A problem of the derived outline is it can not be modified. As a result, when you push the 3d packages from 2D to 3D, the boundaries of the holes are ignored. In this case, you might have to right click the derived sketch and break link. Of course this is bad because the association is lost. We will look at how to give a better solution for this case.

[Anonymous]

Thanks @yqliu 

I'm sure you guys will fix this in a future release.

[yqliu]

For sure.

[ritste20]

Something I have done in a previous design was to add geometry on the board outline layer (20 Dimension) in the footprint of the part so that I could account for clearance on the board as a pass-through hole. I've never had a problem with it rendering on the 3D PCB.

Hope this helps.

[yqliu]

If the 3D PCB isn't associated with a derived sketch, then everything works fine. If we have a derived sketch, we will not be able to update the outline because the sketch is "read-only".

[ritste20]

@yqliu you mean when the board outline is originally based on a derived sketch?

I've never done it that way 'round. thanks for the info!

[yqliu]

Yes, @ritste20, that' what I mean. Or strictly speaking, when the board outline is currently based on a derived sketch ( you might want to do it if you hope the outline will get updated when the source sketch from the mechanical design is updated). If the outline was originally based on a derived sketch, but switched to a non-derived sketch later, it will also work.

Richard