3D STEP to VRML

To be honest for something like a BGA or QFN I wouldn't bother with the balls or terminals - I'd just want a square cube.  That's all the mechanical guys would be interested in.  They are going to be checking the PCB has a single thing against the enclosure - they are not bothered about components under the BGA.

Components under the BGA would be my responsibility in the PCB editor and I'd handle this by setting up an area in the BGA footprint with some height restrictions on, so Pulsonix could do the online DRC checking to make sure the components I were fitting there could fit there okay.

Interesting.  Pulsonix has a built in 3D viewer in addition to the STEP file preview and output and in Pulsonix I mainly use the built in 3D viewer for a quick check because the STEP file takes longer.

I'm not sure how you can visually validate the footprint to ensure solder joint accuracy here since the user is probably going to be outputting the 3D model and the footprint from FPX at the same time so if they've an error input values then it's probably going to be a wrong pitch which would be same on both model and footprint, or the wrong ball diameter.  If it's a small error in ball diameter then it looks to me like it may not be noticable, and any large error would probably be seen by the user in FPX or the 2D view of the footprint in the CAD program first.  I least that's what I would have thought?

I do have a 3Dconnexion space navigator mouse I use at home.  It's nice but I need to get some justification first before I can purchase one for me here.  The MCAD Engineers each have one of the higher-end 3Dconnexion mice.

Tom H wrote: I'm not selling Altium here, I'm simply pointing out some features.

Altium is what I am used to. I started using it in the 80's when it was Protel PCB. It used to be a simple low cost program.
I have been setting myself up to do work from home, and I thought I would try DipTrace, but I am (not surprisingly) finding some limitations. One limitation is it uses VRML for 3D. Another really annoying problem is you can't do batch updates of footprints. You have to manually reattach the new footprint to every component that uses it.

dwaltoneng wrote: I still need to find a way to convert from 3D STEP to VRML.

CAD Exchanger http://www.cadexchanger.com/ works well converting STEP to VRML. DipTrace has problems with the output of CAD Exchanger, but passing the file through a utility called happy3D (by the user Keith Lee on the DipTrace forum) fixes that.

Another method that works but you lose colour information is, open the STEP file with HeeksCAD and save as a STL file, and then convert to vrml using happy3D.