AutoCad to TMCad

[Timmay]

I used AutoCAD 2007 to trace out a drawling i had and used the spline tool to do most of it. When I imported the DXF to TMCad and connect the path it makes it look nothing like what I drawn out. Same thing happens when i try using the ellipse tool. Any ideas?

[Torchmate]

I know that the Spline tool comes in funky. Grab your drawing in AutoCad and change it to a polyline before you export it. I have not dealt with it in awhile, but worst case you can email the file to tech and they can tell you what to change it to in AutoCad before you import it to Torchmate CAD.

[K Mc]

Originally Posted by Torchmate

I know that the Spline tool comes in funky. Grab your drawing in AutoCad and change it to a polyline before you export it. I have not dealt with it in awhile, but worst case you can email the file to tech and they can tell you what to change it to in AutoCad before you import it to Torchmate CAD.

Same with the ellipse tool im guessing too

[HardcorewannabeXJ]

Splined DXF's are definitely a pain, convert it once traced in Autocad to a polyarc or polyline and see if that comes in better.

[wendleburger]

All CNC software seems to hate splines, it's not just limited to the Torchmate stuff.

As far as ellipses go, you need to change a variable in AutoCAD through the command line from 0 to 1. I need to look back through my notes to see what the variable is called. You only have to do it once (unless you re-install AutoCAD). It just changes the way in which the maths that is the guts behind the ellipse is presented.


EDIT: The variable that needs to be changed is PELLIPSE
I may have the value wrong ie: it may need to be 0, not 1. When you type PELLIPSE into the command line it will return the current value on screen anyway, so just choose the other value

[JeepCrawler98]

Did this work for you? I've had good luck running .dwgs through Corel draw, then exporting from Corel into a DXF (works perfect every time with the local steel shop that uses TorchCAD, theirs freaks out when opening AutoCAD DXFs).

[AlxJ64]

I've been running AutoCad 2004 Student version and found that when I import into TMcad that coverting it over to Polyarcs usually makes things work. Another thing I will do is sometimes splines are not fully connected so the toolpath is not applied correctly. I will select the entire part that needs to be closed and tell the machine to connect the path and just give it like a .01 tolerance rather than allowing it to be a .0001 or whatever it is way out there. So far its worked for me on most of my drawings.