Fusion 360 Electronics Pick and Place File Format

[devesh_rai]

Hi,

Could someone help me understand the columns in the pick and place file generated by Fusion?

When I generate the file by using Manufacturing>PickAndPlace, it generates a pretty simple file like this:

Looking at the format, it looks similar to a CSV file, so opening it in a spreadsheet application gives me as the following confirming my suspicion.

What I can figure out is the 1st column is the Value, the 2nd and 3rd are the coordinates, the 4th is the angle and finally the 5th column is the name.

This brings me to basically two questions:

1) What is the format of the coordinates? Is it 2nd Column-> X, 3rd Column -> Y?

2) What is the units of the coordinates? Is it in mm/microns? If it is in inches/mils, is there a way for me to change the units? My mechanical designs in Fusion all automatically default to metric, in the EDA space I had manually set the grid to mm as well.

Thanks,

Devesh

Devesh

[engineeringNCMXB · Accepted solution]

The standard output from Fusion360 is useless for my Pick and Place system.

I wrote a custom ULP to get what I needed to feed directly into the machine controller.

[devesh_rai · Accepted solution]

Thanks @engineeringNCMXB 

Is that ULP something you keep proprietary? Or have you shared it on Github or something?

I did some further investigation since posting the question the default PnP file generated by Fusion is in Mils and while it wouldnt be hard to convert, when I looked at the actual values they are rounded off. So something like 1134.5 mils is reported as 1135 in the PnP file. Obviously someone thought that zero point something mils is a very negligible size and can be ignored. This is further exasperated by the fact when you design your PCB in metric/mm, with a 0.1mm grid all the components have some decimal rounding off.

@Fusion360 Developers:  I have 2 suggestions I hope you consider from an actual paying customer:

1) Please read the grid settings and determine whether the Pick and Place file generated needs to use metric or imperial.

2) Dont round off! For small parts or low clearance boards it would be very annoying.

As it stands, clearly the PickAndPlace file is not usable. 

[engineeringNCMXB]

I can totally share it - not proprietary at all......
You can modify it to suit.

Some of the pieces and parts were patched together from other shared ULP's

This one pulls my internal part number from the attributes of the parts. This is what allows my PnP machine to recognize and connect the part to its own database. All of my parts have an attribute 'SCI_PN' that holds this data.

#usage "ver 2.10 Create CSV data for SCI Quad 4000C assembly"

string Version = "2.10";  // Dec 10, 2019
string fileMessage;

// Calculate angle of component
string rotation(real Angle)
{
  string s;
  sprintf(s, "%.1f", Angle);
  int pos = strchr(s, '.');
  if (pos >= 0) if (s[pos + 1] == '0') s[pos] = 0;
  return s;
}


// Determine side of PCB the component is on
string side(int Mirror)
{
  string side;

  if (Mirror){
    side = "BOT";
  }
  else {
    side = "TOP";
  }
  return side;
}


// Get the filename from user
string usrFilename;
board(B){
    usrFilename = dlgFileSave("Pick a location and prefix name", B.name, "");
}


// Display error dialog if NOT in board view
if (!board) {
   dlgMessageBox("<hr><b>ERROR: This ULP will only operate in the board layout view.</b></hr><p>Switch to the board layout editor and re-run.");
   exit(1);
}

// Main output for Quad Machine
if (board) board(B) {
   output(usrFilename + "_TOP.cad") {
     // File comments
     printf("[COMMENT]\n");
     printf("Solid Camera TOP SMD component position file.\n");
     printf("Created by IVC_TOP_Program Out D-v3.ulp %s.\n\n", Version);
     printf("Centroid Data for pc board: \"%s\" as of: %s\n", filename(B.name), t2string(time()));
     printf("Measurements are in mils. Comma delimited\n");
     printf("Only surface mount components included\n\n");
     printf("%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,\n", "SCI PN", "  RefDes", "  LocationX", "  LocationY", "  Rotation");
     printf("[PLACEMENT]\n");
     B.elements(E) {
       int isSmd;
       int isDnp = 1;
       // string partNumber = E.attribute["SCI_PN"];
       isSmd = 0;
       E.package.contacts(C) { if (C.smd && !E.mirror) isSmd = 1; }
          if (E.attribute["DNP"] == "1") isDnp = 0;
          if (isSmd && isDnp) printf("%s,%s,%6.4f,%6.4f,%s\n", E.attribute["SCI_PN"], E.name, u2inch(E.x), u2inch(E.y), rotation(E.angle));
       }
     }
}

// Courtesy CSV output for quick checking in Excel
if (board) board(B) {
   output(usrFilename + "_TOP.csv") {
     // File comments
     printf("[COMMENT]\n");
     printf("Solid Camera TOP SMD component position file.\n");
     printf("Created by IVC_TOP_Program Out D-v3.ulp %s.\n\n", Version);
     printf("Centroid Data for pc board: \"%s\" as of: %s\n", filename(B.name), t2string(time()));
     printf("Measurements are in mils. Comma delimited\n");
     printf("Only surface mount components included\n\n");
     printf("%s,%s,%s,%s,%s,\n", "SCI PN", "  RefDes", "  LocationX", "  LocationY", "  Rotation");
     printf("[PLACEMENT]\n");
     B.elements(E) {
       int isSmd;
       int isDnp = 1;
       // string partNumber = E.attribute["SCI_PN"];
       isSmd = 0;
       E.package.contacts(C) { if (C.smd && !E.mirror) isSmd = 1; }
          if (E.attribute["DNP"] == "1") isDnp = 0;
          if (isSmd && isDnp) printf("%s,%s,%6.4f,%6.4f,%s\n", E.attribute["SCI_PN"], E.name, u2inch(E.x), u2inch(E.y), rotation(E.angle));
       }
     }
  

	fileMessage = "<hr><b>Success! TOP LAYER CAD Data file for Quad 4000C PCB assembly.</b></hr><p>For import as CSV into PPM software:<P>" + filesetext(B.name, "_TOP.cad\n");

	dlgMessageBox(fileMessage);
}

Sample output.....

[COMMENT]
Solid Camera TOP SMD component position file.
Created by IVC_TOP_Program Out D-v3.ulp 2.10.

Centroid Data for pc board: "E20-400-0100 Vac Sense Upper D-v7.brd" as of: 12/10/2019 12:00 PM
Measurements are in mils. Comma delimited
Only surface mount components included

SCI PN,  RefDes,  LocationX,  LocationY,  Rotation,
[PLACEMENT]
E03-080-1230,C1,1.0700,0.6500,180
E03-040-0990,C2,1.2820,0.4960,180
E03-040-0990,C3,0.6880,2.0090,0
E03-040-0990,C5,1.0950,0.5450,180
E03-040-0750,C6,1.0950,0.5850,180
E03-040-0990,C15,0.1600,1.0233,90
E03-040-0990,C16,0.2200,0.8267,270
E03-040-0990,C22,1.8010,1.5570,270
E03-040-1110,C23,1.5760,1.6420,180
E03-040-1110,C24,1.4910,1.6420,0
E03-040-1110,C25,1.6750,1.6500,270
E03-040-0990,C26,1.7470,1.6250,180
E03-120-1493,C27,0.5850,1.3340,90
E03-120-1493,C28,0.6990,1.3350,90
E03-121-1505,C29,0.7320,1.5660,270
E03-121-1505,C30,0.5950,1.5650,270
E08-065-0050,D1,1.8880,0.5690,90
E08-065-0050,D2,1.7110,0.3720,90
E08-065-0050,D3,1.4860,0.2320,90
E08-065-0050,D4,1.2320,0.1590,90
E08-065-0050,D5,0.9680,0.1590,90
E08-065-0050,D6,0.7140,0.2320,90
E08-065-0050,D7,0.4890,0.3720,90
E08-065-0050,D8,0.3120,0.5690,90
E10-160-0110,D12,1.0530,1.4800,270
E50-120-0160,F2,1.2730,1.5750,180
E99-100-0100,FID1,1.3990,2.0080,0
E99-100-0100,FID2,0.2100,0.6650,0
E99-100-0100,FID3,2.0150,0.7400,0
E02-040-0730,R2,0.3350,0.4800,0
E02-040-0730,R3,0.3950,0.5600,90
E02-040-0730,R6,0.5100,0.2850,0
E02-040-0730,R7,0.5600,0.3700,90
E02-040-0730,R8,0.7350,0.1450,0