Does anyone know if its possible to convert splines to arcs in Auto cad or any other program? I am using Meta cam (mc diamond soft) for laser tooling & this program does not like splines. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Does anyone know if its possible to convert splines to arcs in Auto cad or any other program? I am using Meta cam (mc diamond soft) for laser tooling & this program does not like splines. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Use one of the free spline to polyline lisps. Then, using pedit, use the fit option which will fit arc segments to the polyline. Explode into arcs, and if you need a polyline, you can use pedit again to join it back into a polyline composed of the arcs.
Gerry
UCCNC 2017 Screenset
http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2017.html
Mach3 2010 Screenset
http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html
JointCAM - CNC Dovetails & Box Joints
http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
Gerry,
Thanks for the tip, I will try it out. I also stumbled on the wmfout/wmfin command. This converts to windows metafile & with wmfin the splines are imported as polys. I will try it tonight & see how it works.
Gerry
UCCNC 2017 Screenset
http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2017.html
Mach3 2010 Screenset
http://www.thecncwoodworker.com/2010.html
JointCAM - CNC Dovetails & Box Joints
http://www.g-forcecnc.com/jointcam.html
(Note: The opinions expressed in this post are my own and are not necessarily those of CNCzone and its management)
True, you can "save as" your autocad as an pre release 12 version which wil than change your spline into line and arc segments. newer CNC software usualy don't have a problem with splines
Im useing Mechanical 2010. Thanks for the tip! When I use the v12.dxf save, and get a 3d polyline, its broken into many, many tiny line segments. Can I convert it into a lower resolution group of lines and or better yet, arcs so I dont have so many entities?
note that the flatten command converts splines to plines, its not documented but works. Flatten also sets z coordinate vals to 0 so watch what you are doing.
You can try out the new SPLINECAM app in Autodesk AppStore or download it from autocam2d.com/download link.
Appstore link : http://apps.exchange.autodesk.com/ACD/en/Home/Index
It converts splines to polylines/polyarcs with optimal number of vertices and smoothness.
regards
cncpatriot