3D Canvas - It is not just a Viewer!!!!

Nowadays, PCB designers all over the world are challenged to deliver on complex and dense designs in a faster and a more efficient way. One way to design accurately and efficiently is to visualize and analyze your designs in real time.

Allegro® 3D Canvas covers all your needs to visualize and analyze the three-dimensional model of a design as a manufactured output. It enables you to check whether the symbol placement, position, and proximity to other symbols are proper or not. Its powerful graphical engine helps you in running checks for collisions and verifying the clearance in the design stage itself, which will help in reducing the design iterations. You can interactively zoom, pan, bend, rotate, and cross-probe the 3D design while working with the two-dimensional view in the main canvas. Some of the key features are listed below:

Mapping model files to your design components

3D Canvas introduces a new method to allow designers to map 3D models to footprints, devices, and boards. This new method is known as 3D Mapper. Using new engines and libraries, the limitation of only mapping STEP models is removed, and the new mapper now includes the ability to use a variety of native CAD formats such as Solidworks, Siemens NX, Parasolid, Autodesk Inventor, and Creo as well as STEP

Doings things interactively

3D Canvas provides a control panel with a look and feel similar to the main design canvas. It is loaded with panels for Visibility, Options, Symbols, Collision Detection, Nets, and 3D Mapper.

An entire net or any element of it can be selected for viewing in 3D Canvas using the Nets window.

Customizable Color is another useful feature. 3D Canvas does provide a set of color themes to visualize designs in different color combinations.

Powerful graphical rendering provides multiple camera views like Top Isometric, Bottom Isometric, Top, Bottom, Front, Back, and a couple of other views accessible through menu options as well as keystrokes to view designs from different angles.

Cross-probing between 2D and 3D views helps designers to take care of synchronization and provides the ability to verify design changes easily.

Interactive move is a nice way to do design corrections in 3D itself.

Resolving design issues in 3D Canvas

3D Canvas provides a realistic approach to analyze and verify complex and dense designs. Different checks can be run to visualize clearances between 3D models or between a 3D model and 2D elements, distance between two points in a design, and so on. See the example of a Collision Detection check showing the list of collisions in the board when the minimum spacing is set to 2mm:

Visualizing Rigid-Flex bending and folding of PCB

Isn’t it just great to see how your Rigid-Flex design comes together before assembly? 3D Canvas lets you analyze such designs in their intended state.

Export to industry standard formats

This utility provides support for exporting the 3D geometry and structural information of a design. Multiple industry formats are supported like STEP, STL, PNG, HMF, HSF, PDF 2D, PDF 3D, OBJ, JPEG, IGES, ACIS, and ACIS assembly files.

Refer to Allegro 3D Canvas User Guide to explore more about this utility and its features.

Team PCBTech

Cadence Design Systems