Ok ive searched the forums and cant solve this one…
im using the jedail hollow board template maker with board cad and its been working fine but now is just giving me empty pdf files and no prompt that its successfully completed my template. anyway i also noticed i can no longer create a 3d bezier patch model, it gives me an error saying all cross sections must have 4 to 5 control points. ive checked my cross sections and havnt found anything unusual about them they all have atleast 5 points. any help would be much appreciated ive also flicked through the boardcad manual im about ready to give up and make the template from scratch
cheers!
This may or may not help because its been a while since I ran into this issue, but I had the same issue at some point.
The problem with the cross sections is the quicker solve. For whatever reason you need the same number of control points on each cross section. I don’t think that is written anywhere, but once I figued that out I haven’t had any issues. Not sure its designed to be that way or just a glitch. My quick fix is to design everything with the minimum number control point to get smooth curves and then add points to each cross section until they are all even. Keep in mind for a hollow board you need a cross section for every rib you have planned. So the model you posted would likely not have enough support in the front half.
Again just from trial and error the HBTM program doesn’t seem to work without a bezier model. I don’t know why. HBTM just spits out a file with a 0kb file size. Try zooming in on any hard angled corners. Sometimes the corner folds around itself, if that makes sense, and causes the bezier model to not load. I usually just round all the corners of my model in boardcad and then fix it when I build the board.
If all else fails there are a number of ways to get templates from boardcad without using HBTM.
