Electronic – Altium: STEP File of Board with Multiple Layer Stacks Exports Incorrectly

3daltiumfpc

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:

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

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

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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

Best Answer

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 :)

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