Issue Opening Exported Files

silas

Exporting drawings to PDF seems to work as expected, but I've been having some issues opening the exported DXFs and DWGs in other programs. Draftsight will open them fine, but Adobe Illustrator cannot. Illustrator can, however, open the DXFs created from sketches (not using the drawing package). Any thoughts on why this might be?

Another issue I'm seeing is that even if I open the exported drawing in Draftsight and save the drawing in format that Illustrator can open, the scaling is shifted ever so slightly (~1%) by doing this. A circle that was 2.00" becomes 2.02" This could be an issue with Draftsight or Illustrator and not OS, but it's still curious. Anyone seen something similar?

john_mccullough

Thanks Silas, we do have some known issues with exporting Onshape drawings to DXF which we are working on now. DWG should be OK. 

jon_mcintyre

Regarding the first question, it's most likely the different versions of DWG/DXF we export.  DXFs from sketches are created in Release 9 format, (from the early 90s, I think), so that just about any laser cutter or similar machine can take it as input, since that's the primary use case.  Exporting a drawing to DWG or DXF puts it in 2013 format.   Your version of Illustrator probably doesn't know that format. 

3dcad

@jon_mcintyre  Is it possible to investigate the geometry and use the oldest version that supports such geometry?

My intension would be opening customers dwg files and clean them up for export dxf to cnc. I'm sure 2013 format will be a problem.

jon_mcintyre

@3dcad
Yes, 2013 format would be a problem for your use case.  Thank you for sharing that.
I believe there are different export use cases where the most recent version is preferable, so to give you "export oldest version" we would either need to make 2 export DXF commands (old & new), or add a prompt for version to the existing export DXF command, which means the annoyance of one or two extra clicks when you export.
I welcome everyone's comments on those ideas. 

_Ðave_

I think an extra click or two is worth covering all the bases.

3dcad

I would like to see 'set as default' to avoid annoyance and to remember which version was good. But this system would need settings where one could change the default or go back to choose a version each time.
But I'm sure Onshape needs to have separate settings tab for drawings in every case.

brucebartlett

I find that when exporting file with text and detailed geo generated with splines to be cut on a laser cutter it is better to go for a newer version of dxf eg. 2013, if you chose an old version say release 12 the laser operator complains that his program is very stepy and can not get a good quality cut.

Not sure why, must be to do with how the splines are handled. Also not sure on which version we see a change over.

3dcad

I suppose it's confirmed that we need some sort of version select into dxf export.

bobminer

Thanks everyone. This is helping us prioritize work, so please keep letting us know what you need.

mechanical_cad

Hello everybody! I have another problem. When exporting DWG and opening it in Draftsight it is opening only in the sheet tab. I need the drawing in the model tab, so I will be able to edit. Is it possible? Thank you!

matthew_menard

I just played around with a DWG exported from OnShape and noticed a few things.  This is my first time playing with DWG exports from OS, so I apologize if any of these points have been covered elsewhere.

 @mechanical_cad ; It looks like you can explode the drawing views in the sheet tab, select everything in the sheet tab, do a ctrl+shift+c to copy from base point (0,0 used), then paste to whatever basepoint.  Additionally, you may need to change the pasted item's color to "by layer" since it looks like the sheet borders are set to "not black", which looks like black but won't intelligently switch between black and white depending on the background color like black/white will.  Hopefully the GIF below gets the point across better.

However, after playing around with DWGs from OS, I see a few issues.  It looks like there is no 1:1 output option from drawings, so if you need to make edits at the DWG level, you will need to scale your modifications appropriately after being transferred over to the model space.  Also, arcs and circles get output as multisegment polylines?  This seems like it would have implications for laser cutting type operations.  Further investigation shows that DWG exports from surfaces off a model export arcs as arcs, so why not drawings?  Also, what can be done to get the colors to use what AutoCAD/Draftsight will understand as black/white by default?

mechanical_cad

Thanks! Looks good, but when trying to copy Draftsight says "Can not copy entities to clipboard". 

matthew_menard

Can you try selecting different entities to try and whittle down what the culprit is?  I don't know if OS may be generating some kind of object that Draftsight doesn't know what do do with when copied to the clipboard, so individual selection may be better than an overall box selection. 

mechanical_cad

Yes it is working for one entity. I also tried to copy half of the object, then the other half and it is okay too, but when I try to copy the same whole object the error occurs.Thanks for the fast responses @matthew_menard .