EaglePCB importer for FreeCAD

[yorik]

This is not ours, but I think this is one of the first full "off-site" projects alive, deserves a mention here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eaglepcb2freecad/

[jmaustpc]

And its LGPL, so no licence problems. I like to see interoperability....

Helps FreeCAD be the "one CAD", "one CAD (ring?), to rule them all" ... I am currently reading Tolkien, the Lord of the rings, again.

[quick61]

I noticed this the other day and installed it. Haven't had much time / call to play with it much but from what little I did with it, it seems to work as advertised. Very cool. Here is the link for a YouTube Video showing the plugin in action.

Mark

[bejant]

This thread now cross-referenced to Mantis ticket #001265

[NormandC]

Good thinking bejant.

BTW there is a new "bug" tag on this forum which automatically links to a ticket on the Mantis bug tracker. You just need to type the ticket number, select it then click on the "bug" button in the message toolbar.

Use:

Code: Select all

[bug]1265[/bug]

Result: issue #1265

[bejant]

Thanks Norm, seems I learn something new every day. Now If I could only remember...

[marmni]

You found it . Plugin is in a beta stadium (how you see) but from version to version I introduce new features (next version is almost ready).
Of course I will be glad if you add this mod to main program line in the future (?).
ToDo list is long but if somebody have some ideas please write.

From issue #1265

This workbench should be able to export/import popular PCB formats.

Implement other formats - why not, but exporting (in my opinion) is no so good idea (but who knows ).

[keithsloan52]

I thought this would be great for a 3D cad file of a raspberry Pi. I made the suggestion to the Raspberry Pi foundation, but they cold shouldered the idea by saying that such CAD files already existed, but did not provide any links.

I googled and came across http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Hub#Resources but the STEP files provided do not load into FreeCAD.

The same site has an Eagle v5 file, but this I suspect is too large for the free version of Eagle. Anybody with access to Eagle V6 for reasonably sized PCB's and FreeCAD 0.14 able to produce a FreeCAD file of the pi?

Thanks

[NormandC]

I googled and came across http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Hub#Resources but the STEP files provided do not load into FreeCAD.

This is a little off topic here.

The STEP file won't open in FreeCAD for me either (it's the same file in both rar and zip archives). I still had Solid Edge from work installed in a WinXP virtual machine so I tried the files. No luck: that STEP file is shot, Solid Edge generated a log that says the file is incomplete. I had a go at the Pro Engineer version and was surprised I could open it, since my copy of Solid Edge is 8 years old.

I then exported it to STEP and I was able to import it into FreeCAD. Unfortunately STEP export in Solid Edge sucks, so I lost all component names and colors. I had to rename them manually, and I changed the PCB color to green but didn't bother with the other parts. Other than that the 3D geometry seems to be accurate from the one in Solid Edge.

But I really don't know if that assembly is correct. There's a tiny component labeled "SD_CARD" that doesn't even touch the PCB board.

Hope this helps.

raspberry_b1.fcstd (1.4MB)

Edit: looking at the picture found here, clearly there is a lot of stuff missing from the ProE file I used. The EaglePCB file may be more complete...

[NormandC]

You can get a more complete 3D model of the RaspberryPi Model B on DesignSpark's 3D Model repository but you need to register. Multiple CAD formats are available.

Edit: scratch that, here's a complete working STEP file that you can download without registration: http://www.tronetix.com/joomla/index.php/projects

Wish I had searched before spending time with those damaged files!