Issues with importing SVG and DXF

Software Carbide Create
1

G’day folks,

I am having some difficulty in successfully importing geometry into CC V462.

My Problem:

  1. Importing my geometry with DXF removes curve segments and approximates them with poor-resolution line segments, but pocket hole geometry is fine.
    bad_dxf
    bad_dxf1413×1172 134 KB
  2. Importing the same geometry with SVG imports curve segments correctly, but alters the geometry of my pocket holes.

bad_svg
bad_svg1537×1108 94.6 KB

My files:

This google drive folder has my DXF and SVG files in it.

I did the design work for this in Fusion360. I’m not yet comfortable using Fusion for CAM, so I’m exporting for CC. After the headache that was getting usable 2D drawings from Fusion, I ended up with a DXF. I opened this up in AutoCAD, confirmed all the dimensions - looks good.

My attempts so far:

Unlike many of the existing topics, all the geometry is imported and CC doesn’t throw any errors. Its just that the geometry doesn’t import correctly.

Importing the DXF produces the error I described above. Everything imports correctly except for curves. They are instead approximated with two or three line segments. Circles come in fine.

I did my due diligence, reading through the posts on here, and found plenty of discussion on converting to SVG for import. So, I converted to SVG, with both Illustrator and Inkscape. After importing, I thought I was out of the woods, but not quite.

Everything imports correctly, except for the circles. Upon inspection in CC, they are no longer circles! Some of them import correctly with diameter 10mm. However, others import as ovals, with widths like 10.010mm, or 10.016mm. Height seems to stay uniform.

I’m open to any suggestions at this point!

Cheers,
Mike

Edit 1: Spelling
Edit 2: New user restrictions lifted so I added second image

2

In the past I’ve been able to fix such files by:

  • opening in LibreCAD
  • exporting as MakerCAM SVG

See:

old_dxf

which opens up with curves as curves in Carbide Create:

image
image2067×1440 167 KB

1 Like
3

Hi @WillAdamns,

That did it for me. Thanks!

I’m reasonably technically minded - are you able to give me any insight into why what we just did worked?

From my reading, there are a million different DXF specifications, so I shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t all play nicely with CC. The same for SVG I would guess.

So is it that CC has been specifically designed to be compatible with MakerCAM SVG? Or am I just barking up the wrong tree?

Cheers,
Michael

4

SVG sort of has two generations
Cc uses the new one with a proper DPI set…
Old format was wobbly there and not very standard…

So you could have a mix of old and new and the tool in the middle happens to do both formats well

5

The problem is with the DXF import.

There seem to be 3 approaches:

  • handle only polylines
  • handle arcs/curves if present
  • analyze polylines and where appropriate convert to arcs/curves

LibreCAD as a “real” CAD app necessarily has very good handling and support of DXF — unfortunately, Carbide Create doesn’t have especial support for MakerCAM SVG (it actually extends the SVG format to include toolpath information), but LibreCAD does nicely convert its internal representations of arcs and curves into matching curves when exporting to MakerCAM SVG (not sure if it actually includes the toolpath stuff or no).

Probably using Inkscape the problem is it’s not doing a good job of importing the DXF, and then when re-saving, is perpetuating the bad import.

6

Hmmm. Thanks for the additional information.

If I understand what your saying:

  • CAD programs can output DXF
  • Carbide Create doesn’t do a good job of reading in DXF
  • Carbide Create does do a good job of reading SVG.
  • Other graphics programs also struggle with DXF -> SVG.

This might imply that I probably can’t trust Fusion DXF > LibreCAD SVG > Carbide Create as a plug-and-chug method for importing geometry.

So the “best” solution for this would be for Carbide devs to improve on DXF import? I guess that is dependent on what the common workflows are. You probably have to deal with both importing artwork from graphics programs and geometry from CAD programs - not an easy task.

Cheers,
Michael

7

Carbide Create does a good job of importing DXF, just not perfect (not sure that LibreCAD is perfect on this either).

I’ve found importing DXFs into LibreCAD, then exporting to MakerCAM SVGs very dependable, and I’m sure if I found a file which didn’t work properly, the devs would accept it as a bug report on GitHub.

A while back there was a request for DXFs for testing/validating/improving Carbide Create’s DXF import — please feel free to send suitable files in to us at support@carbide3d.com and we’ll do our best to have a developer look into it.

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