New Feature Wanted - Export DXF!!!

[andrewm]

Part Wizard 2 is a great upgrade and is now a very usefull program. The only feature it REALLY REALLY needs and I would pay more for is the ability to export to either AI or DXF. How about it Shopbot? Any way to get ArtCam to give us this feature?

[cedarknight]

I have been asking for .dxf exporting for two years. I do not believe it is unreasonable request. Most programs have some exporting, if they have any importing. Must be some unbalanced trade agreement.

[andrewm]

It would be worth a few hundred dollars for this feature. This one addition to Part Wizard would make it play a lot nicer in the play ground of other software I own. I do most of my design work in Corel then import it into Part Wizard. Part Wizard 2 is a usefull program now but if you make changes to your design, you are stuck in Part Wizard.

In ArtCam Insigia can you export DXF? I am assuming ArtCam Insignia will import Part Wizard files.

[Brady Watson]

It's not the best solution...but you can copy the vectors in PW and paste them into Corel. Arcs show up as a series of line segments, but straight spans are pretty much on.

-Brady

[andrewm]

I tried that. Every curve was so low resolution that they didn't look like curves. It also wasn't to any known scale.

My main need is to be able to bring my parts back into a CAD program to add dimensioning and text for spec drawings and assembly diagrams. Though it would be nice to be able to bounce files back and forth between other programs to make use of each programs best features.

[cedarknight]

I am not sure I would pay a few hundred more. But maybe fifty bucks. We bought PW and then this year paid $100 to upgrade. Good upgrades, but I think there should of been a way to export .dxf from the start. Our main reason is to cut vinyl paint mask. Some substrate I can lay mask and route thourgh it. But on other the mask doesn't survive the routing. Copy and paste is not even a close solution. I not sure you can recognize what on the screen when you do that. As far as cutting things with straight spans, not much of that being cut on our shopbot.

[jeffreymcgrew]

I've found that printing to PDF actually generates vectors. You can then open the PDF with Illistrator, Inkscape, or the like, and make use of it or resave it as a DXF. It ain't perfect, but it's free, for there are many 'print to PDF' tools out there that are totally free. I use CutePDF, personally.

Just an FYI

[paco]

That is a quite nice hint Jeffrey!

About PDF "printer", I just founded one yesterday that is an OpenSource projects but haven't test yet; it does look good...

PDF creator at http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator

[gerald_d]

I asked the SheetCam guy if he could do a dxf output, and two days later he had it by writing a post-processor that made a .dxf file. The reason I mention this in the PartWizard section is that PW may not have realised that it can be tackled as just another post-processor.

[gerald_d]

I use pdfMachine white from http://www.pdfmachine.com/genp/features.html, but I never got the idea that .pdf's are accurately vectorised?

[jeffreymcgrew]

The post-processor idea is a good one.

I don't know how accurate the PDF's are. I'll have to check that. I just needed the vectors for there were some things we drew in Part Wizard that we needed to bring into Illistrator for assembly instructions and marketing stuffs. So it mattered that it was vector, and that it looked close to the 'actual' part, which it is so we didn't look into it any deeper. I'll check that out later today or tomorrow, see how well the CutePDF does for this...

[gerald_d]

The post-processor route means that you have to apply tool offsets again to get to the real part dimensions, but this is better than having no output at all.

[frank_hav]

As a thought for DXF here is what I currently do.

After saving the file for normal use, I remove all tool paths. Then select all and add a "Cut Along Vector" tool path. I leave depth and such at Zero. Save the tool path file. I then use the file converter in SB3 and save as dxf. You get a couple unwanted lines due to safe positions but they can be removed, or with some playing; probably not even generated.

Frank