Line art into Inventor fusion for extrusion etc

[big_red_frog]

Hi All,

I am running inventor fusion on my PC as a modelling package and to export final models to stl for my 3d printer.

In this respect it is great, and I really get along with it.

However, often I want to take a bit map, convert it to line art in inkscape, export it as DXF and then expect to be able to import that into inventor fusion as a template for extrusion.

However, although viewing the DXF in other viewers, I can see the expected line path, in inventor fusion I get nothing. It imports, but I can see no artifacts to interact with.

Does anyone have a sure fire way of getting line art into inventor fusion?

Unfortunately I do not have a full suite of autocad packages, just the wonderfully free inventor fusion.

My fall back is to place the bmp as a canvas in inventor fusion and then laborisouly hand trace around the graphic with splines, and extrude the result, but this is just so unnecassary and inacurrete.

Any help greatly appreciated! 

Thanks in anticipation.

[Phil.E]

Can you attach one of the DXF files? Thanks!

[big_red_frog]

Sorry for the late reply.

Please see attached file.

Minimally I want to be able to import this dxf line art ( svg would be even better ) then use it as a path for extrusion.

Two main workflows come to mind.

1. which is what I thought should work, import as the basis of a new file, and be able to view, modify, extrude. but I get an empty new file when attempted.

2. which I dont think is supported but would be the preference, import the line art into any new plane in an existing workspace, and then be able to extrude etc.

unfortunatley when I attempt 1, I just get no entitites in the workspace.

This would save a lot of time in design, able to leverage 2D artwork, without having to hand trace a bitmap on a canvas!

Thanks for the response.

Had real trouble adding the .dxf file, forum kept complaining about the .dxf file ( which is human readable txt content )

Please correct the highlighted errors and try again. The attachment's content type (text/plain) does not match its file extension

[big_red_frog]

Note I had to rename the .dxf file to .txt to get it to attach, due to the file type complaint highlighted above.

So please rename the ,txt file to .dxf to reproduce.

The .dxf file is viewable in a browser, so shoudl be consistant.

[Phil.E]

Unfortunately, Fusion does not support 2D line import except as a paste operation.

Can you copy the lines and paste them into a Fusion sketch?

[big_red_frog]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Could you please advise on the workflow for this?

Where am I copying from to get the line art into the paste buffer?

Is this possible directly from within Inkscape to get the components for pasting? I will try this shortly.

[big_red_frog]

Copy buffer from inkscape does not appear valid in fusion.

If I copy a sketch item in fusion, then I can get the paste option.

Switch to inkscape, copy the 2d entities, switch back to fusion, and I still paste the fusion entities.

So I need to understand the intended workflow here. thanks.

[Phil.E · Accepted solution]

You just covered the workflow. Unfortunately it doesn't work with Inkscape. I am unfamiliar with Inkscape so I apologize for the confusion.

In my testing I was copy + paste right from AutoCAD to Fusion. Apparently outside of AutoCAD-to-Fusion workflow, this is not supported.

[big_red_frog]

Thanks for the clarification.

It sounds like without full access to the autocad suite, I just cant do this.

I am only using inventor fusion.