lower support dxf - the electronics cover - differs from my box?

@Greg Holloway , I just thought to make some hinges for the electronics cover and so downloaded the latest .dxf..... Where are the fillets on the corners?!

 

The above was Fusion360.

Below I just opened it with Draftsight, which is really a dxf-based tool.

What do you use?

 

Hmmm.

So if it's an "export" from Illustrator format to dxf, then perhaps the fillets didn't export correctly?

Presumably the lasercutters at Bigbox take Illustrator format directly?

I wonder if that affected any other features....

 

I'm not going to bother you about an obscure detail such as this.

But I did look into it a bit more.

On the Autodesk forum somebody responded:

"It should work for an arc, the only curve typre I've seen problems with are splines. I seem to remember if you have a poly curve it doesn't import correctly, if you explode into lines and curves the import works."

Around the web there are plenty of indications of different kinds of software having difficulties with various .dxf curves. No idea why.

Then in an Adobe forum found:

"what you need to do in Illustrator is use the Object»Path»Simplify menu item, and then check the "Straight Lines" option. You may need to use the "Object»Paths»Add Anchor Points" menu item a few times before simplifying to straight lines gives you enough detail."

Well that's a kind of a workaround, I guess.

I checked a few other features: the nut traps are sort of OK, round holes are a mess and the side panels are rather sharply cut, though it's less obvious because of their chamfered shape.

This is only interesting insofar as it may bear upon the general shareabilty of the design.

Might be good to keep an ear open as to what people do and can be done.

When the last Kickstarter ships I'll share the .dxf there's a guy on the Autodesk forum who'll take a look at it.

 

@Greg Holloway

Here's the thread at Autodesk:

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/desig...file-types-feature-compatiblities/m-p/6296503

An experienced user has tried with 3 different programs and had no luck.

He suggests we (!) try reimporting the .dxf into Illustrator to really verify curves are "there". Alternatively - to give him an answer - do you know the names of the programs that have opened it successfully?

By all means join the Autodesk thread because there are experienced people there and we might get to the bottom of it. It's apt since it's their file format https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoCAD_DXF .

Almost warrants a warning on Thingiverse (congrats!) for those people off too the lasercutting shop.

 

Much improved.

In Fusion360 & Draftsight both electronics covers looked fine.

The cutouts of the side panels are fine too: oddly the associated bolt holes are fine in Fusion360 but square in Draftsight... (cutout of sidepanel below)

Out of interest, what settings did you have to play with?

 

Finally got around to it:

http://forum.e3d-online.com/index.php?threads/hinges-for-electronics-cover.1243/

ps when I finally imported the dxf to Fusion360 to do some work, Fusion360 got the scaling wrong: everything was 25.4 times as big as it should be!

That's an inch conversion issue: I was working in millimetres.

I think this can happen (depending on the importing software) when DXF were exported as being "unitless" (a default)? It may be possible to export them explicitly annotated as being in "mm"?

Anyway, I figured out how to scale.