[Technical Ted]

I'm having trouble loading dxf files that were created in MS Excel. 100.dxf will load but 200.dxf won't They both appeared to be identical until I uploaded them here & saw the file sizes are different. Something like 576 vs 710 bytes. I'm guessing that there is some kind of formatting that needs to be removed from the non-loading file. What am I missing?

[LeeWay]

The second one won't open in TurboCad either.
The first drawing looks like it might be a turning profile, but it isn't quite on center.

[Technical Ted]

It is a lathe profile, just something to experiment with. I have it down to the way Excel is saving the data. If I copy the data from Excel into Word & save it as a plain text file then it opens in Mastercam just fine. I'm going to try writing an Excel macro to write a text file to the hard drive.

[cadcam]

Why are you doing this this way way to much work.Plus Excel does not output a DXF did you just rename the file and think it may work.

[Technical Ted]

Why? Because I want to. :stickpoke Every now & then I enjoy a good brain teaser. Smoke was pouring out my ears for awhile today.

Actually, we work with some strange drawings. They're not made to make life easy for the programmer or the machinist.

Anyway the Excel file is now working. The macro opens the file then uses a simple For, Next loop to read each cell & write it to a file in the mcx directory. Mastercam is now opening it without any problems.

[JimBoyce]

A dxf file is a text file, so is a G code program. I would like more information on how this is done in Excel. Take your time.

[txcncman]

Seems like he is just setting up a script to parse one text file into another. Maybe I missed something.

[Superman]

Ted,
Also look at ASCII files for loading into mastercam, this is an actual .txt file converter

May be easier than using the DXF step, Excel would handle a text output.

I have imported a file with plot points from a CMM to overlay onto a model
-format is 1 point (XYZ) for each line of text, not to sure for arc formats though

[fixtureman1]

Autocad won't open the second one either