Hi hivemind,

I have just finished a 2D project in MOI3D. My intention is to have it laser etched. Hence only 2 dimensional. I thought this would work nicely seing as there are both .ai and .dxf exports available. However, I cannot get the .ai to work properly. I have read up and it seems to me that the main culprit could be the age of the deprecated version of the format used in MOI3D. Is there any convenient way to get this converted to a more modern fileformat that does not include expensive software?

Also I tried .pdf export. Oddly, this shows up completely blank when I open it. I read somewhere that this could have something to do with unsynched origin coordinates. Is there an easy fix for this?

Hi MA, It's not feasible to write modern versions of AI format because there is no documentation from Adobe on it.

The newer AI files are a little odd though in that they are structured as PDF files with a second copy of the file with the undocumented Illustrator specific information as an embedded chunk of private data.

So anything that wants newer type AI files is really just processing PDF and skipping the AI private data, so you should generate PDF instead to get the same result.

Can you post a sample PDF that is showing up blank for you, with the .3dm source? That would help to give you some specific information for your particular case.

But if you are using the "Scale: Preserve units" option you probably should turn on the "Center on page" option to reduce the chance that your objects are somewhere off of the visible page when converted to the PDF page coordinate system:


If you have "Center on page" enabled, the unit size of your object will be preserved but it will move it as needed to place it in the center of the page. If you have "Center on page" unchecked then both size and position are preserved which means your the printed page will map the MoI (0,0,0) origin point to the PDF origin with 0,0 at lower left corner of the page.


What happens if you use DXF format instead?

The MoI v5 beta also supports SVG export so that's another possibility for 2D vector drawing transfer. You can get the v5 beta at https://moi3d.com/beta.htm .

But If you post example files that would make it easier to tell you what is happening and how to solve it.

- Michael

The other thing that would help is if you could also show what options you are using when generating the PDF. Then I'll be able to show you what rectangular area in MoI is being mapped to the printed page boundaries with those settings.

- Michael

Always a joy with this level of helpful support! I guessed as much with the .ai being a secret jungle of proprietary code. And yes - the pdf is not centered. However, I cannot see the "center on page" option when exporting the pdf. This is what I have - using MOI3d version 3...

Hmm... I cannot seem to attach pictures on here for some reason

Also, there seems to be no options for setting the output pdf page size

Hi MA, the "Center on page" option was added in MoI v4 to simplify this kind of thing.

For v3 you'll probably want to draw a rectangle of the page size and put the lower left corner of the rectangle at 0,0,0 in MoI. That rectangle will be the area of MoI's space that will map to the visible printed page so you'll want to move your objects so they are contained inside of that.

The size of the rectangle will depend on your current units in Moi and what settings you have for the unit mapping - the "X units in MoI = X units on page".

Oh yeah another thing that was added for V4 was you can set the page size. For V3 it's fixed at 8.5 x 11 inches if I remember right.

- Michael

Yup. That it is. This does not really work for me. I might upgrade but this is a one off for me so I am not sure. The other option would be to use a dxf instead. That works well enough it seems. The trouble is I want both vectors and raster fields for the laser. I guess a work around could be to first save as .ai and then take the attached but separate .png file containing the fields and use them as is, just need to figure out how to keep all things in the exact same geometry across the files. I'll check with the person who runs the laser to see what is the most feasible route.

There's a good chance that SVG output from the v5 beta would work best.

That will also generate a background image PNG file and it could be better supported by the laser software.

- Michael

I went with the upgrade MOI3D option and resized the output - problem solved. Thanks for the swift support!