Imported Objects from A. I. become HUGE

[johnm]

Folks -

Okay, here's an odd bird, I think.... When the wif creates DXF files that I import into PW as vectors they become huge! We need to cut some fence pickets, 2.4375" x 35" and when I import the vector, the object becomes 61.833 x 888.4918... That's a little over 5 feet wide by 74 feet tall!

When the imported file dialog box opens up and shows the dimensions, they are already large. I checked, and the wife is sending me .dxf's of the part with the correct measurements... I had to duck when I asked her if she was sure about inches vs. feet..... She knows what she's doing... If you read the inches as feet, and then doubled it, you'd be pretty close, but.... wierd....

It is easy enough to transform the objects down to the proper size, but it is an extra step, and ALL of the vectors she has sent me have been oversize...

Any takers?

John Moorhead

[gerald_d]

John, when I opened your dxf from the other thread, I saw something that is about 221 units tall by 76 units wide and thought to myself that someone with an inch background is thinking in millimeters.


(The conversion factor is exactly 25.40000000. Even the inch guys are caving in and have decided to base the definition of the inch on the millimeter. They have decided (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/i/in/inch.htm) that the inch shall be defined as exactly 25.4 millimeters)

[fleinbach]

My table is not square, it is a "rectangle"

[elcruisr]

To address Johns issue I routinely get .ai files from my customers and they are sometimes huge and sometimes very, very small. We've tried several different approaches and none seem to solve it. Cleaning up imported files from customers is one of the joys of this business. There have been entire threads over on another CNC forum of guys ranting about this. My observation is that the graphics programs secretly have it in for the machining programs, very politicly incorrect.......

[johnm]

Folks -

Okay, I've figured out the "what" - if I divide the huge part sizes by 25.4, it puts me to within .040 of my "real" size... Close enough for fence boards...

Now, the why? Everything I am doing is in inches, everything the wife creates, edits and exports in are in inches - where is it picking up a conversion to turn the unit size from inches to MM, and then turning those MM's to inches.

Fortunately we're now on the "vector all you want" plan, so we don't have to pay extra for long vectors. We used to be on a plan that charged us by the yard (meter?) for vectors and it was killing us - we had the option of free night and weekend vectoring, but finally we got tired of working all night.

The wife is using Adobe Illustrator, not sure what version, but it's current...

Any ideas?

John

[cedarknight]

Here a little program for converting units of one type into another. http://www.joshmadison.com/software/convert/

It's on my computer, don't use much. Some others may.

Bret

[elcruisr]

Adobe Illustrator is very problematic when exporting to us poor CNC operators. So are a number of other graphics world programs I can think of (like the latest Corel Draw}. No one has ever been able to give me a good answer except that that's just the way it goes. I know, lousy answer. But seriously it only takes a minute to resize it correctly and you get used to it. This is a common headache among cnc contract cutters. Even better is the guy who's an industrial designer with AutoCAD who thinks he can draw but can't!

Eric

[johnm]

Folks -

I rec'd some very helpful advice here and by email, and am... working on it. Bill Young at Shop Bot suggested importing my file into notepad and editing any 25.4 refs to 1.0... I did that, but the file still imported converting mm's to inches - HUGE... Anyway, I was fooling around and got a work around....

When you import a file into PW, you can choose the scale that the file was created in, either inches or metric. I know that my wife created it in inches, I was watching her save and email me the file... Anyway, as I was importing a file, the left side of the dialog box under size and position, it showed that it was 61.836 inches wide and 888.492 inches tall - still HUGE. But then on the right side of the dialog box under file units it says "This imported file does not indicate the units for the data it contained" and the default setting was inches.... I clicked "MM" for the hell of it and PRESTO - the object was the right size. Go figure.

So, what the hell is happening? I don't know... but it's enough to get the files working. I would like to know why editing in notepad didn't do the trick and why somehow, it thinks that inches are millimeters.. (or vice versa??)

Thank to all for your suggestions and the 'heads up' on importing files from outside sources.

John