Tutorial
With the version 4, eagleUp is much simpler and intuitive to use. Here is a short tutorial that will walk you through the steps from a 2D design to an enclosed 3D model.
Preparation
Open your project with Eagle as usual. Make sure that your board has a closed contour on layer 20 (Dimensions). It can be a rectangle, a complex polygon with rounded edges… Unfortunately at this step a circular contour does not work as it has no edges.
For better accuracy, set the width of your outline to zero so it’s as thin as possible.
The board provided for the tutorial is ready to use. No action needed.
Export from Eagle
For this small tutorial I provide a demo project with a layout and the corresponding schematics. Please consider this only as a material for modelling. The initial idea was to make a simple 4-bit meter for analog signal. As a circuit it probably does not work !
Run the ULP “eagleUp_export.ulp”. You can click on File / Run / eagleUp_export.ulp.
A window with various settings will appear. Here you can set the colour of your board, the type of plating. The images will look better with the 1200 dpi resolution, but the model will get heavier and slower, so you should use it for small boards only. 600 dpi is ok most of the time and has sufficient details. If you have a very large board or want a quick preview you can use the 300 dpi but the quality of the texts will be lower.
You can use the tPlace layer for the silk screen, or tPlace + tNames if you have placed the designators correctly.
If you have a large board and just want a quick preview of the board and components you can select the no image option. It skips all the steps related to image creation so it is much faster.
If you want to try different color sets for your board, try the custom solder mask color. A popup will prompt two hexadecimal colors : one for the mask over copper (usually lighter) and one for mask over epoxy (darker). You can find a color generator here. Share your best results !
Press OK to launch the export. It should take just a few seconds, then you are back to your design. Users of older versions of Eagle ( before 5.11) might see popups asking for the overwrite of the image files.
The export script writes in the folder of your design a *.eup file with the details of your board : shape, thickness, position of the packages, and exports some images of the copper, silk and masks. These images will be mixed to create a realistic view of the PCB.
You can run the export script as many times as you want with different settings to see their effects.
After a successful export you will see a popup. If a new version of eagleUp is available you will get a notification as well.
Import in Sketchup
Open Sketchup. If asked, set the template to engineering in meters. It is convenient to draw. I enter the dimensions in meters instead of millimeters to achieve smaller details. You can delete any object included in the template.
Click on the Plugins menu, then import design from Eagle.
Browse to your project directory and select the eup file previously generated. You will see several terminal popup and disappear during the creation of the PCB images. This step can take a few minutes with a large design on a slow computer. Just be patient.
If all goes well, after a few seconds you will see a popup saying
Eagle'up import completed Missing packages: 1X02
The import is completed. There was no model for the pinheads so it is listed as missing.
Note : if you are experiencing issues with the import in Sketchup, enable the ruby console in Window / Ruby console before running the plugin. This will give useful information.
Here you go. A nice model of your previously 2D design. But will it fit in an enclosure ? No project is completed before being in a nice enclosure, right ?
Further integration
Use the measurements tools of Sketchup to get an idea of the dimensions of your project :
Remember the unit is mm and not meter. Well it seems that Sparkfun Soapbox could be a match for our project.
From the datasheet provided you can try to model the enclosure. To save some time I have included this enclosure in the models. So you just have to click on File / import. Browse to your /models directory and select Soapbox.skp
You can rotate and translate the half-shell below your board to check the fitting. At this point you will usually notice conflicts and collisions.
At this point you can manipulate the board and the enclosure, check for the mounting points, attachments… before having the real board or even purchase the enclosure. CAD saves time, money and a lot of effort !
You may have noticed that the Led pins were quite long. That’s because we have not yet cut them to the proper length. Let’s close the enclosure and check the length needed to have the Leds visible from the outside.
The easiest is to duplicate the half-shelf with the rotate function. Press Control once and it will rotate+copy. Since the shell is symmetrical you can use the middle point of the small side like shown below. Much quicker than trying to add a new instance and try to align it by hand.
With the top shell in place, select it and hide it (contextual menu). You can un-hide it at any time with edit / unhide all.
Now select the four Leds, and move them up (along the blue axis).
Unhide All, and check if the Leds are visible above the enclosure. Repeat until you like the position of the Leds.
For a final check you can apply a translucent material to the top shell. I use Translucent Glass Block Dark. Everything seems all right inside. You can now take measures of the location of the Leds, so you know where to drill the enclosure.
This project is not finished. You can complete the model by adding some proper connectors for the input signal and for the battery, and an On/Off switch. Maybe a larger enclosure will be necessary after all !
I hope this small tutorial shows you the benefits of a 3D modelling of your electronic layout. Please ask in the comments if you need more detailed step.
Excellent!!!
It is working fine, I had troubles with the old version and my OS but with the new Eagleup, its working just perfect, I have to thank to everyone who made this possible. I will show my students this freeware.
Thanks
Neilsao
Found this neat little thing lately on the net and heavily used it, very useful, also for work with SolidWorks with a STL Im/Export between SketchUp and SW.
The only thing that realy bothers me is, when can I use round structures? Can there be a deeper dig on this, at least regarding documentation to avoid running into trouble and getting stuck in the mud? Thanks to all involved.
Cheers from Germany
The only limitation regarding a round PCB is that it needs to be defined by two arcs (two half circles) of width=0.
Jerome
WOW! This is great!
I used to just use a green square to represent my board and if I needed I would place some components in place by measuring their position. this will be a lot easier now that I can see where they should be placed!
Excellent work.
After the import into sketch up it complains about missing packages.
Where should these packages be?
in your models/ folder. You can have as many sub-folder as you want.
Jerome
Hello,
I’m using Ubuntu 11.10.
Sketchup, Eagle and imagemagick work like a charm.
But which paths do you have to fill in when running the EagleUp.ulp for the first time? There is no convert.exe or other to point to in linux.
Or can you just leave them blank?
Thx
Dave
Hi,
Don’t you have convert in your bin or sbin folder ?
Jerome
Thanx for pointing that out.
The composite and convert files are located in /usr/bin/.
Hi,
Excellent work. However I did follow the instructions for this example and all components are missing at the end (the board is perfect !).
Is there something that I’m missing?
Note: using Eagle 6.1.0, Eagleup 4.3, Googlesketch up 8 and ImageMagick-6.7.4-Q16
Hello,
Missing models could come from :
- wrong path set in the general settings
- skp files missing
In particular check eagle version if you placed it in C:/Program Files/Eagle x.y.z/models/
Jerome
For me it works but have 2 issues,
1. The default paths are wrong, easy to fix.
C:/Program Files (x86)/EAGLE-6.2.0/models/
C:/Program Files (x86)/ImageMagick-6.7.6-Q8/convert.exe
C:/Program Files (x86)/ImageMagick-6.7.6-Q8/composite.exe
2. The *board_top&*board_bottem files come out pure ivory, so all i see is a ivory board with components on it.
Default paths need to be adjusted depending on your system settings.
I recommend an older version of ImageMagick, see the note on Installation page.
Jerome
Hi,
I installed everything, but is showing a error when I export for ULP. This error:
Can´t open ‘C:\ Program Files (x86)\Eagle-6.2.0\projects\demofiles\eagleUp\demo3d.eup’
No such file or directory.
What´s a problem?
Hello,
- does the folder exist ?
- do you have write permission on this folder ?
A general recommendation is to avoid storing files in a project folder, it makes it harder to backup your files.
Jerome
Ok, I created the folder. Thank very much.