PCB design exported to mechanical solid modeling

I bookmarked this years ago. Never messed with it. m=2Eweisser (Matthias Wei=DFer) http://72.14.203.104/search?q=3Dcache:lM5Wr6E5xTAJ:

You could try Kicad. It has a built in 3D component modeler but I do not know about its export formats. However, is free so it is easy to try.Find it at:

Ian

It has been my experience that one can build and test *a lot* of prototypes for the time and money "invested" in getting tools to calculate what must be measured & verified on protypes anyway!

The "Big Shop" Kilobuck packages can generally do it - Mentor Graphics come to mind. A.F.A.I.R, the license runs into five digits with special hardware+OS+support requirements to finish off any alledged productivity gained by using them.

In the case of Mentor, a mechanical interface will be an ex$$$$tension module and will - of course - only work with more Kilobuck upstream tools; Catia/Cadence from IBM or something like that.

PS:

Maybe, just maybe, one can write a script that parses design information from the layout package and into something that the mechanical tool can pick up with less work remaining than now (i.e. one needs to write a compiler tool).

My previous experience with that approach, was that all design tools tend to be hermetically-closed-binary formats that maybe only God can get a specification for - *after* making an old testament example of some of the CAD vendors legal people in front of management ;-).

This was a while ago, maybe times have changed.

In article , Art Woodbury writes

Assuming Windows, Vutrax has an export module for IDF format for 3D Modelling software such as Solidworks and Pro-Engineer.

Although the module can be downloaded it is not runable with the standard 256 pin free issue download (about 10MB). If the initial look seems likely to satisfy for PCB design, ask Vutrax support for a

Initial downloads (installer and the three 'System' files) from

EZPC from Numberone Systems allows 3D modelling of components, as well as all the PCB design tools. I think you can export the 3D part to DXF, although I havent actually tried it.

Most of the high end PCB tools will do it too, at a price.

We use Mentor Expedition. It will export IDF Version 2 or 3 files which can then be brought in by the mechanical application. ie...Pro-E, Solidedge, or Solidworks. We do this on a regular basis with Pro-E but I'm sure Solidworks will do it too.

Hope this helps.

Mark