How do you export a 3D board model in old versions of KiCad? The trick is that in Pcbnew, you can export the board as a VRML file. Then, you can import the mesh inside of Blender, MeshLab, or some other software for 3D meshes. Before important into CAD software like FreeCAD, you’re going to have to cleanup the meshes first. Then you can import into FreeCAD and export as STEP files if you so wish… but for my workflow, generic 3D modeling software works fine. From there I can visualize the mechanical CAD structural layout and do raytracing renders to get photorealistic depictions of the product, model the fit within a larger system, etc.
And, oh, IGES… wow how I never worked with IGES in years nor has Blender native support for it or any other common 3D modeling software I used, but hey, I am still finding more name-drops of it.
need some mesh cleanup first, since the models and board are not guaranteed to be nice manifold meshes.
20200710/DuckDuckGo kicad vrml
20200710/https://www.drechsler-it.de/UsefullStuff_FromKiCadToCad_VRML.html