Using Fusion 360 and Eagle CAD Together
A couple months ago, I wrote a tutorial on taking PCB designs created in Eagle and building 3D models in Fusion 360 based on those designs. The process was not a difficult one, but it did involve generating DXF files, manually building the PCB model, and populating it with components within Fusion 360.
Fortunately, Autodesk has, since acquiring Eagle, made a highly convenient workflow for getting Fusion 360 and Eagle to work well together. The new method is much easier to use, and it allows revisions to the design in either Fusion 360 or Eagle to be synced easily with the opposite program. This tutorial covers this new workflow.
Prerequisites
This tutorial assumes you’ve done a little bit of work ahead of time:
- You must have both Fusion 360 and Eagle CAD installed on your machine.
- You have a PCB design in Eagle and you are ready to start work on the design in Fusion 360. Your design does not need to be finished, after all, part of the purpose of the workflow discussed in this tutorial is to refine the design using 3D CAD and ECAD together.
In this tutorial, I will be using a design for the Wello WiFi doorbell.
- Gather 3D Models of your Electrical Components
- Sync your Eagle Design to Fusion 360
- Add Component Models in Fusion 360
Before we start the process of linking together your Eagle CAD design with a design in Fusion 360, we will need to gather 3D models of all the electrical components in your PCB design, or at least all the components that affect the PCB’s fit into other parts of your project. The Eagle-Fusion interface created by Autodesk will handle generating the PCB itself and all of the part footprints, but unless your libraries in Eagle have 3D design files associated with them, we will need to provide those ourselves.
There are several good sources of these 3D design files. My favorite is GrabCAD. GrabCAD is a public library of 3D models created by the community. You will find high-quality design files there for just about any common electrical components used in your design. If you cannot find your specific components, it is often possible to find generic parts that use the same SMD footprint as the ones used in your design.
Now that your have a collection of 3D models for your electrical components, we can sync your Eagle design to Fusion 360. So, open up your PCB BRD design in Eagle. On the far right side of the window, you will find a Fusion Sync button. Click this button to get started.
You will then be presented with a dialog box with options for syncing the two design programs together. The first option is to link the Eagle BRD design to an existing file in Fusion 360 or create a new Fusion 360 file. Most of the time, I choose to create a new design.
Next you will choose a location in Fusion 360 to save the soon-to-be-created design file.
Finally, you will be presented with a list of components that will sync to Fusion 360. In all likelihood, because the inclusion of 3D design files in Eagle libraries is uncommon, you will see a warning for each piece that there is no 3D design file. This is perfectly fine. While we could go through and put 3D design files into the Eagle libraries, I prefer to do this work in Fusion 360. For me, I just prefer to keep all my 3D CAD work in Fusion 360 rather than trying to mix Eagle’s ECAD with 3D CAD.
Click the Push button and wait a few minutes for the software to complete its work.
Once the sync process in Eagle finishes, head over to Fusion 360. If you navigate to the location you specified in Eagle you will find a new design file created from Eagle. Open up this file and you should see something like this:
You will find that the PCB itself is complete with all your traces and silk screen layers. The components, unless you had 3D models before, will be represented with placeholders. So, in this step we will work on replacing these placeholders with the 3D models we collected at the beginning of this process.
The first step in this process is to enter the PCB editing workflow in Fusion 360. This feature is still a preview, so you will not find it in the ribbon menu as you would with the other workflows. Instead, at the bottom of the screen, in the editing timeline, you will find a PCB icon. If you right click this icon, you will be presented with an option to edit the PCB.
Next we can start modifying the design to use the real component 3D models rather than the placeholders. To do this, pick a part and right click on it. A menu will appear with a number of options. Select
Then, simply select the appropriate 3D model and Fusion 360 will automatically place it into your design.
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