Export DXF without construction lines

[Anonymous]

I have a slightly complicated design that I'd like to export the sketch as a DXF for, and send that to a manufacturer.  I would prefer to keep all the construction lines as they would take time to remove, and I would need to refer to them for future design modifications.  The problem is, the DXF files show all lines as equal, including construction lines.  Thanks.

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

What I usually do for getting things either laser cut or waterjet cut is that I extrude my design from the original sketch that includes all the constraints dimensions and construction lines.

Then I create another sketch on the top surface of that extrusion and project all the extruded elements into that new sketch. 

That sketch then is exported into a DXF.

[Anonymous]

Works great, thanks!

[elliot]

I hope this is fixed in new versions of Fusion, or there is an alternative strategy.

For complex drawings, simply 'drawing it again' isn't a tenable solution, and is open to too many errors.

I'm not sure if there's something more practical via the CAM panel. So far the 'CUTTING' tools doesn't seem to help with exporting DXF's for common laser cutters

[TrippyLighting]

I described the alternative method in my post above, which was marked as the solution.

[calebc01]

Honestly?  Pain in the posterior workflow for something so simple.  It's actually easier to export as a step, import into OnShape, and use its superior workflow to export the new surface as a DXF.  All you have to do is right-click the surface and say "I want a DXF of this."  Done.

[TrippyLighting]

While I agree that the Onshape workflow takes out a couple of steps and it would also make a great idea for the idea statoin, I can assure you that exporting the file as a step importing it into Onshape and then exporting it as a .dxf is not faster my any means.

Coming to a new forum and introducing yourself with a rant is not the most intelligent way to contributing to a community.

[calebc01]

True on both counts.

[elliot]

To update:

Now I understand what the answer is suggesting.

If you:

1. Make a sketch

2. Extrude it / whatever

3. Make a new sketch on that extruded surface (don't draw anything at all)

4. Close the sketch and export it 

Then you get the desired result. It's a bit of a different paradigm (make a DXF of the result, not of the drawing itself).

I apologise for my confusion.

Thanks all

Elliot

[michael55SE4]

This was 3 years ago.  Was the bug ever fixed?   Is there a procedure for voting for bug fixes?

[goblinn]

It is really terrible that such a great tool has bad UX when you won't to manufacture (export without construction lines)

[TrippyLighting]

This thread has a solution posted. Did you bother to read that before posting ?

[goblinn]

I read the solution but I still think that this approach is bad from UX experience.

[michael55SE4]

I appreciate that you took the time to post a work around for the bug.   It had been several years, and I was wondering if they had a mechanism in place to vote for a fix if the bug hadn't been fixed yet.  

[TrippyLighting]

I am not sure where you see a bug here.

[michael55SE4]

The current behavior has caused me hundreds of dollars in wasted material and countless hours working around it, so I assumed it was a bug.  There conceivably could be some use case where the current behavior is acceptable, but I can't think of one.  I appreciate the description of your workflow, but workarounds create so much extra work that its easier to just remove construction lines from all my designs that need a DXF export.   I also tried the 3rd party DXF export from the CAM module, but that seems to only work in trivial cases.

The standard way to export different line types in a DXF file is to assign them different colors so they can be assigned different process settings.  In order of preference the behavior I'd like to see:

1. Have an option to not export construction lines at all. 

2. Export construction lines as a separate color. 

I realize Fusion 360 is a big program with lots of different constituencies, and am simply looking for a place to put in my two cents about what the dev team should work on.  

[TrippyLighting]

In general that's what the idea station is for, bot I have a strong opinion on its usefulness.

The workflow I described above has one advantage:

Many CAD users are not very disciplined in creating sketches and avoiding stacked line elements. In the early days of CAD this very often led to pen plotters drawing a line repeatedly on top of another resulting in a wasted time, wasted plotter paper, wasted plotter pens etc. Still nowadays this often confuses software or laser cutting etc.

Creating a "fresh DXF by auto-projecting a "virgin" surface really avoids this problem altogether. It is spiffy clean!

Also, it is so fast to do fully and associative to the underlying surface. I have a hard time imagining that this is mode time consuming than deleting all construction lines from a Sketch.

Also, you can apply proper solid modeling techniques and eliminate fillets from sketches, and in general details that should be solid modeled and not sketched.  There are no sketch constraints to debug and in general this is much faster then designing a sketch with all needed details for machining.

[goblinn]

Hi,

I found add-in DXF for Laser from Ross Korsky under add-ins. This is something what should be nice to have out of the box.

@michael55SE4 
https://apps.autodesk.com/FUSION/en/Detail/Index?id=7634902334100976871&os=Win64&appLang=en

[lichtzeichenanlage]

@michael55SE4: A BUG is a mismatch between specification and implementation. Most users only can validate documentation vs implementation. But in both scenarios I would love to see the documentation / specification that you're referring to 😉

You're talking about expectation vs implementation and that's called  What you're talking about is a change- or feature enhancement request. And those could be placed in the IdeaStation.

Edit: 07:36

[Anonymous]

I'm sort of a long term noob with Fusion 360 - I use it for awhile, then by the time I get back to it, forget half of what I knew before.....  Anyway, I felt a rage coming on with this construction line showing up in the sketch to dxf and a search led me to here.... 

Doing the new sketch/project the body approach is brilliant for me.  I also can add that I renamed the two sketches with "design sketch" and "dxf sketch" so I don't someday go into the one I used for dxf and start flailing around....  lol.  Mind you, I guess I have to remember to re-project....oh well, can't have everything !

Anyway, thanks for the tip and thumbs up from Canada !