Re: gEDA-user: quick question

[Carlos Nieves Ónega <cnieves@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
at work we always need to deal with space constrained designs, so the 3D
model of the electronics is really mandatory.
The usual way to do this is to export the board to IDF. This is a
standard designed for this purpose and it is text based, so only an
exporter would be needed for PCB.
The specifications are freely available at:
http://www.intermedius.com/html/idf_overview.htm
There are 3 versions: 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. The first two are widely used
and are similar (these are the ones supported by our 3D CAD program).
The 4.0 version has a lot more features, but the syntax has changed.

The 3D CAD program imports the IDF file. If it founds any previous model
of any part in a library directory (i.e. if we made that model before),
it uses it. If not, a rectangular block with a given height is placed in
the 3D model, using the placement outline of the component (we need to
introduce the height of a component when creating our library).
This way, the 3D CAD program is the only one dealing with the 3D model. 

I think it wouldn't be not so difficult to add an IDF exporter to PCB,
and let the 3D cad program the rest. This is the usual way...

Regards,

Carlos

El sÃb, 11-02-2006 a las 08:57 +0000, James Weeks escribiÃ:
> I have just seen this artical "3D board modeling with Eagle and POVRay" 
> on hack a day
> http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000617073526/
> Its a tool called Eagle3D that translates the 2D PCB layout into a 
> 3-dimensional view. As i dont use Eagle i have not tested this software 
> myself but after reading about it and looking at the gallary 
> (http://www.matwei.de/doku.php?id=en:eagle3d:eagle3d)  it looks like a 
> really good feature.
> 
> My question, is there a simular kind of tool that can be used with PCB, 
> im just intrested.
> 
> Also the reason i posted here is that PCB seems to be the tool of choice 
> for geda users so i figured some of you would know, you might be 
> intrested in this and the fact i watch this list and dont really want to 
> subscribe to yet another mailing list :)
> 
>