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Re: pcbnew: DXF export missing Line option

 

What you are asking for is a single line outline of the board.
not really...
typically when you have designed your pcb edge with i.e. push buttons etc.. you need to design also a front panel that has to be mechanical produced i.e. in aluminum

so my path was to draw the front panel in pcbnew, using the board and parts as mechanical references, on drawing layer
then on comment layer I put dimensions
Once it worked, I plotted the DXF of Drawing Layer and Comment Layer to send the DXF to the mechanical manufacturer They could import directly DXF to produce the mechanical front panel without any human reworking

Now this is unusable because of the DXF out which doesn't have a single line for the drawing outline

Maurice



On 12/04/2016 00.51, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
I wasn't following correctly.  What you are asking for is a single line
outline of the board.  To my knowledge, the DXF plotting never worked
this way.  It originally drew and outline of the board outline segments
so the board outline had width with intersecting rounded ends except
arcs which where drawn as a single line so it had many issues.  We could
provide this if someone has the time to code it but it must be
implemented as an option so the current DXF plot behavior can be maintained.

On 4/11/2016 5:10 PM, easyw wrote:
Hi Wayne & Nick,
that was me that 2 years ago that opened that bug 1360790...
I didn't know that this was discussed so deeply, I just noticed there
were no reply at all ...

If you design some mechanical parts inside pcbnew (i.e. an enclosure for
the board) it is necessary to export this draw to DXF as a single line
to send this to mechanical production...
I still consider this a very useful feature missing in KiCAD but
available in most ECADs...

Still I have some hope that could be revived ...

Anyway @ Nick, if you can reach the person who needs this feature, you
can tell him/her to contact me... I have some workaround to export
pcbnew drawings to DXF; moreover my kicad StepUp script could be slighty
modified to import the drawings in FreeCAD and the directly manipulate
those or export to DXF...
but those are just workaround

Regards
Maurice

On 11/04/2016 19.42, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
This has already been discussed.  The decision to change from the line
drawing to the polygon outlines was at my request.  JP graciously
changed the DXF line drawings to the actual polygon shapes generated by
the intersection of the line output.  I requested this because the line
drawings required massive amounts of effort to convert to polygons.  I
will not ask JP to change it back or add an option to use the line
drawings.  If someone is willing to step up to the plate and
re-implement the line drawing dxf output, I'm OK with that as long as
it's optional and the polygon output is kept in tact.

On 4/11/2016 6:30 AM, Nick Østergaard wrote:
Hi all

Someone on IRC just asked about being able to export DXF as the line
type and I found this thread via google, which I will revive. Since it
describes the problem pretty well with the attached images.

So is this by intention or not that one can not use the plot mode
combobox now? I just tested in 6673 on windows.

Regards
Nick Østergaard

2015-06-19 12:37 GMT+02:00 easyw <easyw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Hi,
I'm plotting some mechanical parts using pcbnew

in old stable release (4022) it was possible to plot DXF with the
option
Mode:Line
then the mechanical DXF exported was fine with single Line objects

now (5785) it is not possible anymore ... it seems that the Line
mode option
is gone...
the result is an object  double lined as in the attached images...

I tried to just enable 'm_plotModeOpt->Enable( true );' and adding
choice
Line to the form, but it is not enough...

could someone help me in finding where I should search to add this
option?

I think that for exporting mechanical parts (related to the pcb
board) it is
useful to have Line mode available...

thanks
Maurice

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