Friday, July 11, 2014

how to Align 3D body with footprint surface in Atlium Designer

When working with 3D model in Altium Designer beginners may face problem with how to properly place the 3D body with the footprint in Altium layout editor. This blog post shows how to correctly match the surfaces of the 3D body and the footprint.

In the earlier tutorial a footprint for a header connector was created in LP Wizard then imported to altium designer. Now here a 3D body is added to the the same footprint to make it a continuum tutorial and also explain the alignment.

The following picture shows the footprint that was created in the last LP Wizard to Altium Designer tutorial.


Now we gonna add a 3D model of the header and align with the above footprint. The 3D model header looks like the following in the 3D-tool software.

67996-406HLF FCI header 3D model

This 3D part is then added to the footprint. See adding 3D model in altium designer tutorial for this step.

Once you have added it to the footprint the 3D view in altium designer should look like this-


Now we will align these two so that the 3D body is correctly aligned with the surface of the footprint.

Select Tools > 3D Body Placement > Align Face With Board as shown in the figure below.


After that, select the 3D body(the header) then select the lower surface of the body as shown below-


The 3D body surface and the footprint surface will be then be aligned to the correct level-



Now the pins can be aligned with the pad and holes. See other tutorials how to align 3D body with footprint.

Once done the final alignment is shown below-



See more PCB design tutorials


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