Wrong via geometry

[djon_3V3]

Hi there,

It seems that the person who coded the via in 3D view never saw any.

They are modelled as plugs, protruding OVER the solder mask.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

I think Electronic Forum is a better place for this.

günther

[djon_3V3]

Hi there,

Sorry i disagree. As far as i understood my own action, i am reporting a problem, an unexpected issue that i see as a bug.

As stated in this forum section description:

"Report issues, bugs, and or unexpected behaviors you’re seeing. Share Fusion 360 issues here and get support from the community as well as the Fusion 360 team."

Electronics forum description says

"Working an electronics project and need help with the schematic, the PCB, or making your components? Join the discussion as our community of electronic design specialists and industry experts provide you their insight and best practices."

From this, i believe this is the place to post. If you have an other vision, i would like to understand your point.

Have a nice day.

[TrippyLighting]

The viewport display for PCBs is unlikely meant to be taken as a 100% geometrically accurate representation of a physical PCB, as that would require quite a bit of computational resources to create and maintain the necessary geometry.

As usual with everything in Computer graphics and CAD some reasonable compromises and approximations have to be made.  

[djon_3V3]

hi @TrippyLighting 

In the general idea, i would have agreed with you. Pointing to unreal engine V5, we see that even not so modern computers can display hundreds of million of polygons of static meshes without really suffering. The coder in me believes most CAD data can be seen as pretty static data and be correctly handled by those techniques.

But i digress..

In the current case, the geometry got increased compared to what a via normally looks like... a plain hole...

On other hand, we have a hollowed tube, which is much more polygons that one should use for it.

Someone went the extra mile into representing some more geometry, i'll get there too in order to have that corrected.

Nothing is too small to be done right. IMHO, of course.

[TrippyLighting]

There is a key difference between the data type and model that feed a game engine on one hand and a CAD application on the other.

Game engines work exclusively with meshes. Those meshes usually have a finite resolution. Any manipulations are performed on those meshes and geometric precision is not the goal. As long as things are visually OK and too small, or too fast to be perceived, that is good enough. They are only used for visual representation.

A CAD application stores geometry in form of NURBS data. A mathematically precise representation of geometry with the goal to create  precise models for manufacturing. That NURBS data not only is more complex and requires more computational resources but it also has to be kept in memory to be readily accessible for manipulation. Before before the geometry in a CAD application can be displayed it first has to be converted into a triangulated mesh. That extra step is usually completely CPU bound and not needed  for a game engine.

As such comparing a game engine with a CAD application is comparing apples and oranges.

The coder in me senses that you were not aware of these things 😉 

[djon_3V3]

I am, i am... Old 3D fart here..

As you said, it stores in nurbs (or one of the many other volumic/surfacic ways to describe geometry) but displays polygons. Which, once all computations to generate them are done... are pretty static.. Until models get changed, which trigger a conversion into some other -but yet again very- static meshes. This is the last part i am talking about.

Storing information about a tube might use some bytes here and there. The polygons that make each of the vias are much more than the description they originate from.

However, the machines we have today and those of yesterday are plenty capable of rendering hundreds of those boards with PBR shaders and not drop any sweat.

Modern techniques and correct shader programming makes polygon count a variable, not an imperative. Just have a look at Nanite and Lumen technologies in unreal5. 

Still, just to get back on tracks: those bumps are not necessary, incorrect and give wrong information about the board. That ought to be corrected. 

[edit] Dare i add "this is CAD, not a game engine, we aim for precision and correctness".. 😜

[djon_3V3]

As a side note, seeing that we can now have pcb tracks and masks as real geometry, it seems that the fusion team is going towards much (much much) more polygons than other options.(like image mapped tracks and bump map)

This reinforces my perception of the geometry on the vias being a fixable quirk, not a feature.

[TrippyLighting]

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@djon_3V3 wrote:

As a side note, seeing that we can now have pcb tracks and masks as real geometry, it seems that the fusion team is going towards much (much much) more polygons than other options.(like image mapped tracks and bump map)

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I thought we had firmly established that those aren't polygons ? Never mind 😉

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@djon_3V3 wrote:

This reinforces my perception of the geometry on the vias being a fixable quirk, not a feature.

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It can and should be improved, I agree. I's unlikely a bug but was a deliberate choice.

In my many interactions with members of the Fusion 360 team I've only met intelligent and motivated individuals, eager to create a great tool. Let's keep that in mind!

If you want for this to get visibility with the developers, in  the future please post it in the forum section where it will get visibility. In this case that's likely the Fusion 360 Electronics section.

For this time I'll tag @jorge_garcia 

[djon_3V3]

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@TrippyLighting wrote:

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@djon_3V3 wrote:

As a side note, seeing that we can now have pcb tracks and masks as real geometry, it seems that the fusion team is going towards much (much much) more polygons than other options.(like image mapped tracks and bump map)

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I thought we had firmly established that those aren't polygons ? Never mind 😉

Nope. Never said that. I've said that there is a data model that is a description of the objects in a non-polygonal fashion AND that there is polygonal data being realtime displayed, which is a computation from the previous model in order to be rendered. CAD data -the perfect nonpolygonal precise data the application works on- is not displayed as-is. Polygons are, which is all about that diverging chit-chat.

However, i do hope that the great folks around here will take a bit of time to make the vias look great and move on to other fix or feature. 

Going that way too.

[jorge_garcia]

Hello Everyone,

Thanks for the feedback, it's really appreciated. I've reported it.

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

Best Regards,

[djon_3V3]

Hi @jorge_garcia 

If you could just please drop a word here when issue is resolved, that's all i would ask for.

Thanks a bunch.

Have a great day.