For a variety of reasons I haven’t use my CNC stuff for more than a year and now I seem to have forgotten everything I knew. With the house and workshop to myself for the weekend I thought I’d get on with a project that has been waiting for ages but I seem to have fallen at the first fence with this problem.
I have done a 2D drawing of profiles, pockets and some drilling in AutoCAD. Having cleaned it all up, got rid of construction lines, made profiles in to polylines etc I saved it as a DXF file.
I then opened Cut2D and even fired up the tutorial to remind me what to do. I have set the material to 75mm x 75mm x 30mm which is larger than the subject to be imported and cut.
I clicked the import button. Selected the DXF file and clicked open and the pop file selection window closed but no profile was imported. No error messages or clues were shown.
Scratching my memory for reasons I saved the AutoCAD DXF file as a 2000version file due to some vague memory of Cut2D possibly not liking the 2007 version [but that memory might apply to something completely different such as the etching company I use only having old AutoCAD]. Anyway it had the same result, nothing imported.
Next I shortened the file name as it was a bit long winded and still used the old format but that didn’t work either
Next, as I sometime get in a tangle with the AutoCAD units-mm selection I tried opening the DXF file in CorelDraw to make sure I hadn’t drawn it 67km across instead of 69mm but it imported to CorelDraw at exactly the right size.
Finally I saved it from CorelDraw to a new DXF file name and tried importing that DXF into Cut2D. This time the profiles imported but way undersize from what was drawn. 1/10th of what it should be i.e. 6.9mm wide instead of 69mm. I can see how I can select all and then pull this to a new large size but I can’t see how I ensure it’s the right size.
Other info – PC is running Win7, the cad program is AutoCAD 2009, Cut2d is V1.1
An undisturbed weekend in the workshop is way too good a chance to miss out on so I am really hoping there is someone out there who a) can’t sleep or is somewhere where it isn’t night yet and b) can say, “do this” or “ do that” and it’ll be fine. I really would appreciate your assistance. If it’s easier to reply directly my e-mail is paul <at> ngtrains.com. I’ll be here with my fingers crossed that someone can help
Thanks in anticipation
Paul