DXF trouble--doesn't appear

Support Basics & Interface
#1

I’m new to Blender, just starting out. I use Mac os X, and I’ve worked through a few of the tutorials and started getting hooked. I’ve previously done a fair amount of illustrations using CANVAS 10, which will export DXFs. I’ve tried to open or import these, and nothing happens at all, even with really simple drawings, like a single square. I would especially like to import bezier curves created in Canvas.

Nothing seems to happen when I import a dxf created by blender, either–although I haven’t experimented much with this. I exported the default startup cube to a dxf, and when I import that file, nothing shows up. In the outliner window, there is a new box that says “cube”, but It seems not to exist in the blender scene.

I’m pretty new to this, so maybe I’m missing something really elementary…

Thanks for any help!

Whit

#2

you might be interested in this:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56017&highlight=solid+model

#3

Does convas10 export 3D dxf or 2D? That might make a funny difference too.
It might be scaled very large. Remember that the default clipping for the camera is 100, so if your dxf model is larger than 100 units (whether it’s inches, meters, or mm), it won’t be visible. Select it in the outliner, and scale it down until you can see it.

About going from Blender to another App with DXF, I’ve never tried it.

#4

After much trial and error, I succeeded in importing Canvas-generated bezier curves using .ai files. Thank you for the scaling insight-- they were indeed very large and therefore invisible.

Before I hit on the .ai format, I tried using .svg, but got a “python error”

Here’s the console log, for what It’s worth–I don’t know much about console troubleshooting. I’m not sure about the .dxf’s, but I’ll drop it for now because I’ve got what I need. Thanks again for the advice.

Pasted log:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/Applications/blender-2.40-OSX-10.3±py2.3-powerpc/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/svg2obj.py”, line 868, in fonctionSELECT
scan_FILE(nom)
File “/Applications/blender-2.40-OSX-10.3±py2.3-powerpc/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/svg2obj.py”, line 807, in scan_FILE
BOUNDINGBOX = get_BOUNDBOX(BOUNDINGBOX,SVG,0)
File “/Applications/blender-2.40-OSX-10.3±py2.3-powerpc/Blender.app/Contents/MacOS/.blender/scripts/bpymodules/svg2obj.py”, line 577, in get_BOUNDBOX
BOUNDINGBOX[‘coef’]=w/h
ZeroDivisionError: float division