How to complete 3D Export PCB in Altium

No there isn't a way to export that.

You only can export the 3D models included in your PCB.

There are some tricks for solve this issue but they are really hard and IMHO they don't solve the problem. You can find them in the links below

Here are some topics from Altium Design Forum (you must be registered to see them):

http://forum.live.altium.com/posts/193722

http://forum.live.altium.com/posts/193565

http://forum.live.altium.com/posts/192662

Update: The format Parasolid allows to export the copper features and Altium export the PCB 3D model in that format


There is such Tools-> Legacy Tools-> Legacy 3D View.

Running.

Click Tools-> Export.

There we disable everything except text and silkscreen, otherwise we will never wait for the render to finish.

As a result we get STEP of pure silk-screen printing (by the way, it can also unload the trace there). This STEP is loaded to its motherboard, like the usual 3D_Body, directly on top of the board.


The best way that I have found that actually yields good results is to upload the design to oshpark.com, they have a script that automatically converts gerber files into a 2D images (front and back) for preview, with all of the silkscreen, pads, and traces in fairly high resolution. The file is generated with purple mask, I usually use Photoshop's replace color function to change the mask to green. Here is a corner of one of my boards:

enter image description here

Then I generate the step file from altium and import it into Solidworks and simply add the aforementioned images to the board surfaces. I assume that this would work with any 3D rendering tool that reads step files. It yields really good results.

Here is a part of a fully rendered example:

enter image description here