In my job as a shape cutting programmer ( abrasive waterjet, laser, cnc plasma cutting ) I am often sent CAD drawings of questionable origin. Sometimes these drawings contain spline entities that don't translate well into my CAM software. Usually I flatten them using the express tool which in addition to projecting all entities on the z zero plane converts most splines into arc polylines. This would be great except that frequently it leaves all of the lines and arcs slightly detached ( so close that you can barely see any separation between the pick points at the ends despite zooming in all the way ) from the polyarcs thus preventing the profile from being converted into a single polyline. This wouldn't be a problem so much for the CAM software as it can accomodate some gap but as I am stuck laying out my nest sheets in AutoCAD I offset the profile by half of the required part separation, change the offset to a contrasting color layer and procede to layout the parts avoiding any overlap of the offset profiles. Now to my problem, with these "dirty drawings" after flatening them I have been manually re-connecting all of the lines to the arcs, picking the end point of, preferably, a line placing it aside, picking it up again and snaping it to the end of the arc. It isoften the case this is a tedious and time consuming process. I would like to know if there is a method using AutoCAD or some other free software app ( if my company was willing to spend money I would be using legitimate nesting software ) that will knit the ends together.
