Documentation has always been important for the splitflap project , and a big part of that is keeping its README landing page up to date so it's easy to see what the project is about. However, if you're not an electrical engineer or experienced hobbyist, the schematics and board layout images that were previously included in the README could be a little hard to read. So I wanted to include 3d renderings of what the PCBs actually look like in real life to make it even more approachable. Example auto-generated 3d rendering KiCad has a built in 3d renderer, but it's not easily scriptable (as of the current stable version, KiCad 5). Updating photo renderings in the documentation would be too tedious and error prone to do manually - especially now that the project has 7 different PCB designs - so I wanted a way to generate these automatically whenever the designs change. I've previously described how I automated schematic rendering using UI automation - a technique w
This is my sixth post in a series about the open source split-flap display I’ve been designing in my free time. Check out a video of the prototype . Posts in the series: Scripting KiCad Pcbnew exports Automated KiCad, OpenSCAD rendering using Travis CI Using UI automation to export KiCad schematics OpenSCAD Rendering Tricks, Part 1: Animated GIF OpenSCAD Rendering Tricks, Part 2: Laser Cutting OpenSCAD Rendering Tricks, Part 3: Web viewer One of my goals when building the split-flap display was to make sure it was easy to visualize the end product and look at the design in detail without having to download the full source or install any programs. It’s hard to get excited about a project you find online if you need to invest time and effort before you even know how it works or what it looks like. I’ve previously blogged about automatically exporting the schematics, PCB layout , and even an animated gif of the 3D model to make it easier to understand the project at a glanc