I've been playing around with Arduinos for quite a while. One thing that is missing is the mechanical specifications of Arduino boards, UNO particularly under the "Hardware" section. It would be great if these are added as CAD files (atleast, SolidWorks or .step files would be best). For people like me who is designing a housing for the arduino, a 3-D model would be of tremendous help. I know I could get dimensions off of EAGLE files but there should be an easier way. I've found that other sites have down this for us (partially) such as: Arduino Hole Dimensions Drawing « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers!
I have a commercial SolidWorks 2011 license from work that I could use for personal projects. It also includes "CircuitWorks" which is an add-on to SolidWorks and it enables the user with advanced circuit board mechanical design and modeling. Please let me know if I could be of any help. I'd like to get the opinion from the professionals who have been deeply involved in the Arduino project since its conception.
I think this should definitely be a must addition to the next website update. Arduino dev team should probably contact Layne if shorthanded in CAD work. I could also pitch in for some help. I am passionate about contributing to this wonderful community.
OK; I'll bite. Why is a 3D model useful? I would think that trying to build anything that takes the 3D aspects into account would end up running into compatibility problems with assorted Arduino clone boards that make different decisions WRT USB connector, power connector, SMT vs TH components, and etc. There is a lot more agreement on the 2D aspects of the design...
Is there a standard practice for this sort of thing that enables the 3D model to say "here are standardized components like the shield connectors, and here is a bunch of stuff whose details are unspecified, but will have height less than X" ?
3D Model would be useful for several reasons. One is you could know the exact height of the board and can integrate that into your project's 3D model. I am planning on building a quadcopter soon and I have the 3D Model of the frame almost ready except I don't have the Arduino board mounted.
But you're right, a 2D CAD file would be more than sufficient for most people. I just wanted to bring this to attention since it is not that hard to come up with a dwg file and post it on the official website for people to download along with the EAGLE files.
s there a standard practice for this sort of thing that enables the 3D model to say "here are standardized components like the shield connectors, and here is a bunch of stuff whose details are unspecified, but will have height less than X" ?
^ I don't understand what you're trying to say here...can you please elaborate?
The Arduino uno has four mounting holes and 5 specific-sized connectors (say, 8mm above the board) that are in well-defined spots (shield connectors + ISP.)
It has two additional connectors (power and USB) in a location that is less completely defined, with the exact measurements somewhat incompletely defined (miniUSB, microUSB, various power connectors.) In between these standard components are a bunch of other components whose locations and shapes are NOT standard, but are assumed to be "shorter" than the connectors, and not obscure the mounting holes. I'm wondering if there is a standard practice for drawing those other components, as well as the "fuzzy" power/usb connectors in a way that describes their limits rather than their exact dimensions...
westfw: If you have many different connectors, there is a way to dictate "fuzzy components" in the drawings. Usually they'd have a Dimension X where X is tabulated in the title block of the drawing.
But for 3D models, I don't think you can do that.
Here is one that I got on the internet and corrected a few things. The final rendering is as follows:
There's a whole bunch of models in the Google Sketchup 3d warehouse. Not sure how accurate they are but some indicate they are to spec regarding dimensions. Search fro Arduino here:
