Exporting face in Inventor 2012

[Anonymous]

I need to export faces on a part. When i do this in either DWG or DXF if creates splines in the 2d drawing. Then i have to go back and redraw all the radii. Is thier a way to convert or export without getting splines? Our machine won't recognize the face drawing unless i redraw all the circular segments.

Thanks,

Adam

[PaulMunford]

I'm afraid that I don't know if it is possible to do this - I hope that some one can help. We convert Splines to polylines in our CAM package (Alphcam), which makes a better job of it than AutoCAD.

I put a post together on converting Splines and Arcs to Polylines:

Autocad: Converting Ellipses to Arcs

How do you do it?

[JDMather]

I don't have time to track this down - but I thought they added a built in method of taking care of this.

If not, I know there is a way of converting splines to arcs (which g-code understands) in AutoCAD.

If someone doesn't come along and post solution I will try to find the time to look it up.

I prefer to work with customer examples to provide solutions - so post file here to motivate me.

[Anonymous]

JDmather,

I have been trying to figure this thing out for days now. Here is a background.

I model these blades in Inventor. Export the face as a dwg. When i do this, it breaks up all the arcs. Then i have to basically redraw over all the curves save and then I'm good. I was hoping thier was a way just to export with out having to redraw. Here is an example dwg.

Thanks,

Adam

[RobJV]

This is the HUGE problem with export faces!  I typically perform a save copy as on flat patterns instead of export faces.  In the subsequent dialog box I am then able to substitute lines for splines and save this in a ini configuration file and I have no problem on my CNC burning table.

(Could you convert your part to sheetmetal to export the flat pattern?)

When using "options" when exporting faces there is some sort of bug that prevents the xml files from even being used (you should be able to select the xml file that will replace splines with lines but it does nothing!).

The export faces also should not use the same dxf dialog box as drawings use.  Just give us an export faces dialog boxes that will export 1:1 models and give us similar options as the "save as flat pattern".

Autodesk any suggestions?

(By the way I am using 2011 so not sure if this is fixed in 2012.)

[PaulMunford]

Scott Moyse has been putting together a useful set of posts on John Evans 'Design and Motion' Blog, which includes all the different ways of exporting 2D data from 3D models for CNC work.

Check it out here:

Creating CNC Cut files