I’ve been working my fanny off creating a rather kicky parametric design, and it’s taken a couple of weeks off and on to figure out the way the program works…
but I’m now to the point where I want to actually export the file into a usable format for lasering, which in the case of the GF, means I need to get it into .SVG form (2D).
My export options are a bunch of formats I’m not familiar with…what’s the least labor intensive way to do it? (I basically want to just export the sketch - there is no need to export 3D information for this kind of designing.)
(By the way - I have already considered exporting to STEP, opening in Rhino, and then exporting as AI, opening in AI and converting to SVG. That seems a bit extreme…I’m sure there’s an easier way.)
I don’t particularly use Fusion 360, but I think I recall seeing that you can right click on a sketch (in the feature tree) and choose to export it as a DXF. Then you could open that in Illustrator and convert to SVG.
Your sketches have a direct save as SVG option. If you don’t have a sketch with the features you need, you can create a new one and project the object(s) you need onto it.
Has something changed - I thought DXF was to be an accepted format for the Glowforge? I guess if you needed to assign line colors etc. you’d have to modify in Illustrator (or whatever)?
It might be - we just don’t know yet. The base format is SVG - I remember Dan saying that somewhere - but it doesn’t matter - either one is easy to convert once you get it into Illustrator.
360 has a whole module for this. Click the save icon and choose new drawing. You can do as many drawings as you want based off of your sketches or any number of other criteria. Now in the drawing, on the right click “output”, from there pick either DWG or PDF. I really think either of those will work but if not, then yes, extra step and convert to SVG.
I remember them saying it will work with a bunch of different file types, not just ‘cut’ files like svg. I distinctly remember PNG and PDF being on the list. Because I do everything png-to-svg*, so it stuck out to me, and PDF because I’ve only used that for contracts and brochures, so it surprised me. But I think there were, like, 5 or 6 different file types that it could use.
*This is not an efficient or pretty way to work. But I just like it. I would not recommend this to others. Because it is silly.
Edit:
Compatible with JPG, PNG, TIF, SVG, AI, DXF, PDF, and many more file formats
That’s what they have listed under the tech specs, but I think there were more file types mentioned somewhere else.
Based on @Hirudin’s screenshot, I may have misspoken, I am not on a system that I can run Fusion on, so was going from memory, and didn’t remember a DXF intermediate step. Inkscape etc. can open DXF and save as SVG, so perhaps that was what I had done back the last time I did it.
PDF (portable document format) is a great file format. When I did a lot of design work, my end file was almost exclusively PDF for client review/markup and to send to print house.
Good luck with switching away. I’ve tried a bunch of programs and none of them feel like they keep up. I kick out dxf files and have never had a problem with it.
I believe that @Dan recently said that DXF importing into the GF software is not guaranteed for the initial release, though they do plan to support it at some point.
