topic Re: Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018 in Inventor Forum

Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018

jtrudel3JBC9 — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 13:48:18 GMT

Our company just purchased a few Inventor LT and Autocad LT licenses, we use it to design simple parts and export that information to our CAM software. What i would like to do is export views as .DXF, similar to what i would use Solidworks to do. I've tried "save copy as", and there is no .DXF option. The only thing i did find was the "export face as" option, which works, but only for a single face. I need to capture the whole view. Am i missing something here?

Re: Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018

mcgyvr — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:21:44 GMT

Create a drawing, place your views as needed, save copy as dxf.

Pretty sure its the same process in Solidworks..

Re: Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018

jtrudel3JBC9 — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:01:10 GMT

Please, if I'm going crazy here, tell me.... I do appreciate the help.

Re: Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018

mcgyvr — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:31:00 GMT

@jtrudel3JBC9 wrote:

Please, if I'm going crazy here, tell me.... I do appreciate the help.

You need to create a drawing (an idw file or dwg file) from that part file (ipt file) then you can export the views from that as DXF..

You are just in the ipt file (part file).. now..

As state above you need to create a drawing, place the views you need then you can create a dxf from that..

You could also just do the export face as multiple times for each face you need..

Re: Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018

jtrudel3JBC9 — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:42:51 GMT

Ok, i misunderstood. I see what you mean now. I was looking at it the same as Solidworks, from the part you can do a save as .dxf, and wizard pops up that lets you choose what views. Thats not too bad, just an extra step. Thank you for the help.

Re: Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018

mcgyvr — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 15:57:19 GMT

@jtrudel3JBC9 wrote:

I was looking at it the same as Solidworks, from the part you can do a save as .dxf, and wizard pops up that lets you choose what views.

Cool.. That seems like a useful feature to have if you need multiple dxf views..

I do all my CAM programming right in Inventor using the free HSM express CAM addin and that generates the gcode for our HAAS cnc machine....

(and next year (well 2019 software so in a week or 2) Inventor collection users get the full version of HSM included so I'm excited about that)

I believe that HSM (full version) can be a standalone program so you can just send the CAM programmers your Inventor file and won't need to do DXF...

Quite a few of the CAM programs out there also support importing the native Inventor file too..

The downside of the free version is that if your Inventor user isn't doing the programming then you need to have Inventor on the CAM programmers computer too..

Re: Export .DXF from 3D Model Views in Inventor LT 2018

jtrudel3JBC9 — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 20:35:57 GMT

Ill have to check it out. We sell CNCs, and we re-sell Alphacam, so we try to stick to it for our CAM. I mainly use it to create the demos to show off either the software or machines.