This picture isn't very good, I'll admit that. I have some better ones, though. How do I explode the block? I have AutoCAD 2012, but I have no idea how to use it on a DXF file. Thanks for your help.

select it and type EXPLODE, then hit ENTER.

I select all the stuff in the DXF file and type EXPLODE? I'm sorry I have no clue what to do with this.

When I open the .dxf, there's only one item, a block which contains all the other items. If you can select them individually, then you don't need to explode it.

Sorry, my mistake. I dragged and dropped the .dxf into AutoCAD, which made it a block. The file you posted did not contain a block.

So, my guess is that the 3D polylines are not supported by LazyCAM.

Wait, do you have a licensed version of Mach3?

I have a license for Mach3 and LazyCam. I put both of them in the Mach3 folder.

How do I know what will be "drawn"? I loaded a knew image (a little better than the previous), and I see blue and grey lines in LazyCam. There are a few straight blue lines that don't belong.

LC's dxf importer is not the best. I never use polylines and all entities are lines or arc's for what i have done.

Some comments on your drawing:

Like Gerry, I also exploded the whole drawing and there were some 500 + items that didn't explode and LC locked up when i tried to import
a ver12 dxf of it. I also took the drawing and did the equivilant in Microstation and the curved lines were converted to arcs and the exported dxf locked up LC.
So I deleted about 75% of the file and LC  was able to use it.

I fooled with the tolerance setting in LC but that didn't improve things.

I used CamBam and it had no trouble with the complete exploded ver12 dxf .
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Frankly, I don't know what your going to do with this file or any equivilant one like it for that matter.
There are converters out there but the results most often leave something to be desired. I don't play much in the
"picture" or "image" machining / routing arena. Results from upper end software seems to be satisfactory for the router folks.
If i want a picture done then it will be vector based as i can control what i want to accomplish for the engraving.

I can't comment much on LC's use of bitmaps or images. I fooled with it some time ago and wasn't impressed with it.

BTW, i didn't delete the bird that was in your dxf file.

RICH

 

Hey Rich, thanks for the response. LazyCam takes forever to load (Windows thinks it crashes), but it loads the image. The problem I seem to be dealing most with is going from the image to a 1-bit line drawing for conversion to DXF. I'm playing around with options, and making some progress. Thanks.

Converting an image to a .dxf like that will never get you any real usable results. For best results, try a program like Image to G-Code, or Photo V Carve.

It's also possible to use a program than can create g-code directly from the image. I think LazyCAM can do this?? MeshCAM can. Depending on the image, these can work OK, to not so good.