PCB & 3D Model Viewers

Visual artifacts of a hardware project — for design review, pull-request comments, marketing pages, and assembly docs. For Gerber-specific viewers see Gerber Viewers; for 3D mesh editing tools see the 3D printing section.

PCB-aware viewers

• ★ KiCanvas — renders KiCad project files (.kicad_pcb, .kicad_sch, .kicad_pro) in the browser as a single web component. Drop a <kicanvas-embed src="..."> in your README or docs site; it just works. MIT. The default embed for KiCad projects in 2026.
• Tracespace View — Gerber-only but renders any EDA's output. See Gerber Viewers.
• InteractiveHTMLBOM (ibom) — clickable HTML BOM doubles as a PCB viewer with part highlighting; see BOM Tooling.
• PcbDraw — generates pretty static SVG/PNG renders of KiCad boards. Good for marketing.
• EasyEDA viewer — for .json projects shared on EasyEDA / OSHW Lab.

Generic 3D model viewers (STEP, STL, glTF)

• ★ Online 3D Viewer (3dviewer.net) — open source, browser-only, supports STEP/STL/OBJ/glTF/IGES/3MF and 30+ others. Embeddable.
• ★ <model-viewer> (Google) — web component for glTF/GLB; one-line embed; AR support on iOS / Android. Doesn't read STEP directly — convert via gltf-transform or freecad first.
• CAD Assistant (Open CASCADE) — desktop free viewer for STEP, IFC, IGES; the reference STEP viewer when something else looks wrong.
• FreeCAD — yes, the full app — its STEP/STL viewer is fine for ad-hoc inspection.
• eDrawings (Dassault) — free closed-source STEP/SLDPRT viewer; Windows/Mac.
• GOM Inspect — free; mesh inspection / metrology viewer.
• MeshLab — free, open source mesh viewer/editor; ancient but reliable.
• f3d — fast cross-platform standalone viewer (formerly "F3D"); reads almost everything via VTK.
• kiri:moto / OpenCascade.js samples — browser STEP viewers via OCCT-WASM.

Embedded / docs-friendly

• ★ KiCanvas for KiCad — see above.
• ★ <model-viewer> for glTF/GLB — see above.
• GitHub native rendering — GitHub auto-renders STL files inline in PRs and READMEs.
• GitLab native rendering — same for STL.
• Sketchfab — hosted; free tier with public uploads; great for marketing pages.
• Smoothie-3D, 3dprint-mate viewer — niche.

Snapshot / image generation

• PcbDraw — KiCad → SVG/PNG.
• gltf-transform — npx gltf-transform inspect and CLI optimization; pairs with <model-viewer>.
• Blender (headless) — render PCBs / mechanical assemblies for product photography; gerber2blend + pcb2blender automate it.
• FreeCAD's TechDraw — generate dimensioned 2D PDFs from a 3D part for inclusion in a datasheet.

Pick this if…

• Embed a live KiCad project in docs/PR/README: KiCanvas.
• Embed a 3D-printed part on a product page with AR: <model-viewer> (convert STEP → glTF first).
• Quick local inspection of any 3D file you can't open: f3d or Online 3D Viewer.
• High-quality marketing renders of a PCB: PcbDraw + Blender (via gerber2blend).
• Customers should rotate the model on your store page: Sketchfab embed (or <model-viewer> if you can self-host the asset).