CAD tool for pedal hardware layout?

[artofharmony]

Hi all! I just put the finishing touches on a PCB design and I'm wanting to finalize the layout of the controls on the pedal face. I want to try and figure out where the pots and switches need to go to fit everything in. I would like to import 3D models of the enclosure and hardware from Mouser or DigiKey into a CAD software or something so I can play around with layouts and get exact measurements without having to waste precious physical resources. Anybody know of any tools that would work for that? Free ones would be best!

[davent]

Effects pedal Builders vector pack v1 looks to be still around for free, the much expanded v2 is for sale on Etsy, very little cost.

v1 - https://www.scribd.com/document/465566485/Pedal-Vectorpack
v2 - https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1208292535/pedal-builders-vector-pack-v20

Inkscape as far as i know is still free and can be used to work on pdf's.

[Kevin Mitchell]

I use fusion 360 free version. It caps out at so many editable projects, but you can simply mark complete ones as read-only when done and make editable again later if needed.

With that, I'll create a sketch onto applicable sides for drill-centers and export the sketch as a DXF file to import into a vector editing program. Had good luck with Affinity designer recently and sent the order to tayda for UV printing.




*the blur is the camera, not the print*

[R.G.]

FreeCAD

[Phend]

Like Kevin suggests, Fusion 360, I have, (from my business), Autocad inventor,  both are Autocad products, Hammond boxes from Mouser site load spot on in terms of dimensions (step files).
Learning curve... ??

[drdn0]

If you spend a little bit of time setting up Kicad libraries (using .step instead of whatever the native 3D files are; should be included for most parts, or you can add your own), you can export the entire PCB as a .step which you can import into Fusion 360.

[artofharmony]

Resurrecting this to report my conclusion. I ended up using TinkerCAD. It's fully browser-based and has almost zero learning curve, so perfect for me and my workflow! The feature set is pretty minimal, but I don't remember running into anything I've needed that TinkerCAD couldn't do. Especially since all I'm doing is downloading 3D models from Mouser and putting them together. I was was able to export a model of my board from Flux.ai (my EDA of choice), but the model ended up being WAY too much for TinkerCAD to handle, so I had to make a minified version that only included the electrolytic caps, DIP switches, and LEDs. That was the only frustrating part. YMMV, but it worked pretty well for me! Thank y'all for the suggestions!