Michael,

I went ahead and saved the drawing in CAD as a PDF but still it failed. I think this may be because the dxf original I opened came from a graphics program. At least the PDF, when opened in MoI, did not have those nodes on nodes errors. So, it seems that you are saying to leave that step out, i.e. to open the drawing in CorelDraw, clean it up and save it straight to a PDF. Correct?

You may wonder why I do not just go ahead and try that myself, but I am collaborating with someone else who works in that program.

Thanks

Andrew

hi Andrew,
select the curves you wish to rebuild press the tab key and type rebuild press enter, the options for the rebuild will appear top right.

Barry

Hi Andrew,

re:
> So, it seems that you are saying to leave that step out, i.e. to open the drawing in
> CorelDraw, clean it up and save it straight to a PDF. Correct?

Yup, that's correct. Basically for any transfer from CorelDraw to MoI use PDF format for the transfer instead of DXF. But when transferring from a 2D CAD program to MoI that's when DXF would usually be preferred.

The problem happens with curve segments in CorelDraw (and other 2D illustration apps) that have a tangent handle on one side but none on the other side. That makes a bezier segment of 4 points but with 2 points stacked up on the non-tangent-handle side. Most 3D CAD programs do not like to have that kind of stacked up control points on curves, it kind of degrades some of the mathematical properties of the curve at that spot.

When MoI opens a PDF file or AI version 8 file it will look for those and tweak them slightly to avoid the stacked up control points. It doesn't do this for every kind of file open because that tweaking does make for a very small change in shape and usually MoI tries to be pretty conservative and avoid modifying things that changes the shape of things at all.

- Michael

Michael:

First, my apologies for not replying sooner to thank you for your detailed answer. (Not that I understood it all!) My situation is a bit complicated, not to say unusual, in that I am actually collaborating with someone who is on one side of the Atlantic while I am on the other. But, as our English cousins say, "it's needs must".

The pdf that was sent did work and worked well. I am not sure, though what you meant when you said that "It doesn't do this for every kind of file open..." Do you mean that it will not always for pdfs, or not always work for other file types?

We are trying to establish a workflow for the ultimate creation of stl files to drive our CNC machine. At this point I create the wireframe or armature as it were. Next, my English colleague uses this to create the design using his graphic software (CoreDraw), he sends the result back to me as a pdf file and then I use MoI to create the stl file. What I really like about this is that it completely sidesteps the use of a CAD program, something I have often found like using a sledgehammer to drive a tac, att least as far as our purposes are concerned.

Thanks,

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

re:
> The pdf that was sent did work and worked well. I am not sure, though what you meant when you said that
> "It doesn't do this for every kind of file open..." Do you mean that it will not always for pdfs, or not always
> work for other file types?

Yes I meant not for other file types. It will do it always for PDF and AI files.

- Michael