Some problems working with VRML

[chrisf]

Firstly I'd like to thank all of the developers for the huge improvements since I last used FreeCAD in anger in 2014. Really like the Part/Body containers in particular. Very intuitive and much better for working on multi-component designs.

I'm working on the case for an electronic product. I make component models in FreeCAD and export to KiCAD using VRML then export PCB assemblies from KiCAD again using VRML back to FreeCAD to check fit. Is this still the most appropriate work flow? I'm seeing a few issues that I don't recall seeing in 2014. I forget the FreeCAD version back then but right now I'm using 0.17 under Ubuntu 16.04.

1) If I select a Part to export as VRML, the resulting VRML isn't imported correctly in to KiCAD. Using view3dscene, I get errors like this:
view3dscene: VRML/X3D warning: Invalid number of items in a normal or texture coordinate array for shape "IndexedFaceSet": Not enough items: 312, but at least 416 required
If I copy the bodies from the part to the top level and make a fusion, that exports fine so it's a simple workaround but thought I'd mention it anyway.

2) A couple of probably related issues with how FreeCAD is managing the /tmp resources for displaying an imported VRML file. Yesterday, my fcstd project wouldn't save because it reported that VRML resources in /tmp were missing. The only way to exit was to close FreeCAD and accept 'Don't Save'. Earlier I'd found that I could only import a KiCAD VRML PCB if I didn't have anything else visible in the project. If other objects were visible, the import would go ahead as normal but nothing appeared in the scene. Looking at the imported object it had blank fields for VRML file, URLs and Resources.

Has anyone else had problems with VRML like this? I guess the workaround for the second problem would be to re-import the VRML but any other suggestions would be welcome.

[easyw-fc]

Firstly I'd like to thank all of the developers for the huge improvements since I last used FreeCAD in anger in 2014. Really like the Part/Body containers in particular. Very intuitive and much better for working on multi-component designs.

I'm working on the case for an electronic product. I make component models in FreeCAD and export to KiCAD using VRML then export PCB assemblies from KiCAD again using VRML back to FreeCAD to check fit. Is this still the most appropriate work flow? I'm seeing a few issues that I don't recall seeing in 2014. I forget the FreeCAD version back then but right now I'm using 0.17 under Ubuntu 16.04.

1) If I select a Part to export as VRML, the resulting VRML isn't imported correctly in to KiCAD. Using view3dscene, I get errors like this:
view3dscene: VRML/X3D warning: Invalid number of items in a normal or texture coordinate array for shape "IndexedFaceSet": Not enough items: 312, but at least 416 required
If I copy the bodies from the part to the top level and make a fusion, that exports fine so it's a simple workaround but thought I'd mention it anyway.

2) A couple of probably related issues with how FreeCAD is managing the /tmp resources for displaying an imported VRML file. Yesterday, my fcstd project wouldn't save because it reported that VRML resources in /tmp were missing. The only way to exit was to close FreeCAD and accept 'Don't Save'. Earlier I'd found that I could only import a KiCAD VRML PCB if I didn't have anything else visible in the project. If other objects were visible, the import would go ahead as normal but nothing appeared in the scene. Looking at the imported object it had blank fields for VRML file, URLs and Resources.

Has anyone else had problems with VRML like this? I guess the workaround for the second problem would be to re-import the VRML but any other suggestions would be welcome.

Hi,
you probably would find kicad StepUp very useful
It is now a FC WB installable with Addons menu

StepUp-WB-Menu.png (31.18 KiB) Viewed 596 times

https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?t=14276

[chrisf]

Thanks easyw-fc. That looks good. I'll check it out.