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I have been having this issue for some time and have not yet figured out whether it is a user error or an Altium bug.

I have a PCB design with two layer stackups:

enter image description here

In the Altium 3D view it looks good. You can easily see where the different layer stacks are applied:

enter image description here

However, when I export to a STEP file and open in SolidWorks, the entire board is a uniform width:

enter image description here

The STEP export seems to ignore the layer stacks and just exports the entire board (or flex) as one solid piece. Altium claims to support rigid-flex and flex designs, but this export failure seems to be a significant problem. Is this a known bug, or am I using the tools incorrectly?

UPDATE: It appears the 3D-PDF export does it correctly, but I really need a STEP file:

enter image description here

DerStrom8
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  • 1. Are there converters from 3D PDF to .STEP? 2. Try the forums at live.altium.com, usually people there are quite helpful. – Joel Wigton May 04 '16 at 16:37
  • I already looked for a way to convert from 3D-PDFs to STEP but all I have is Acrobat Pro, which does not appear to have any method to do that. – DerStrom8 May 04 '16 at 16:47
  • Can you import IDF into SolidWorks? I would try that way instead.. – Daniel May 04 '16 at 17:09
  • SolidWorks does accept IDF but the same issue appears there as when exporting to STEP. The board is all one thickness. – DerStrom8 May 04 '16 at 17:16
  • There is a dedicated solidworks plugin for altium which gives reasonable results (can be real slow though). The step exporter in altium is pretty basic, it wouldn't surprise me if it was a limitation of the exporter itself causing your board to come out wrong. – Sam May 05 '16 at 09:38
  • @Tom I've tried the ECAD-MCAD SolidWorks Collaboration plugin (one plugin for Altium and one for SolidWorks) that supposedly allows you to push a design to a vault and open it in the other program, but the boards still come out with uniform thickness. Is this the plugin you're referring to? – DerStrom8 May 05 '16 at 11:48
  • I forget exactly what it was called, but I don't remember having anything to with the vault. Although whatever it was, I don't think I tried exporting a hybrid stackup. I know it's not an ideal solution by any stretch of the imagination, but can you trim the pcb to the right thicknesses in Solidworks? (although my experience with Solidwork's step importer has been a bit hit and miss personally) – Sam May 05 '16 at 21:42
  • The "vault" for the ECAD-MCAD Collaboration is a stripped down version of the Altium Vault, it's not the native vault. I can strip it down in Solidworks but wanted to avoid having to do that, if at all possible. Technically I'm an electrical engineer and shouldn't be dealing with the mechanical models at all (though of course I do anyway) – DerStrom8 May 05 '16 at 22:29

1 Answers1

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Putting this into an answer. Looks like the technology licensed for the 3D PDFs is owned by this company, Tetra4D.

And you're in luck, my friend, they offer a free 28-day trial of their program that will convert PDFs to .STEP :)

Joel Wigton
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  • Thanks, but I'm really looking for a more permanent solution. I first came across this problem at work about 6 months ago, and I ran into it again today. A 28-day trial is not going to help, and this is really something that Altium should be working on. – DerStrom8 May 04 '16 at 17:30
  • Fair enough. I've had my own frustrations getting .STEP files for the mechanical team, so I get it. I would check out the forums then, or open a ticket if you're a paying Altium customer. – Joel Wigton May 04 '16 at 17:50
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    I actually just created a ticket for this at Altium. Unfortunately unless 300 people vote on it I expect it'll be quite a while before they get to it.... Thanks for your suggestions, anyway – DerStrom8 May 04 '16 at 17:54
  • Sad but true. I've actually had better responses on the forum posts than filing tickets, even though I pay the maintenance fee every year! – Joel Wigton May 04 '16 at 18:20