MulletAndMustache

OMFG then the designer can figure out a work around for what's not included, as everybody who's currently using Designer without DXF export features have been doing thus far. I have to do that whenever I export 3D data to a .step or .igs format, most of the time they even lose part naming. Or from OBJ or FBX... They all lose information when you export to a 3rd party. Let me say it again. In the designer files there's already all of the information that would be needed to make DXFs. The HARD PART is converting SPLINES to the mathimatical ARCS that are needed in the DXF format.

No. You just have to have mapping of the important attributes. Lots of information won't be pertinent from one file format to the other and DXFs are pretty bare bones as far as file information goes. Designers typically understand that when you're exporting to a 3rd party file format from any software you're going to lose information in the process. I don't expect to be able to export a jpeg with an alpha channel for example... The hard part that Serif doesn't want to do is figure out how to effectively convert splines to arcs. All of the other information needed for DXFs will already be in their own file formats.

They have the same functionality and serve the same purpose... So you're directly competing with their products. Just because Photo is missing the magic wand doesn't mean you're not competing directly with Photoshop... Dude we just want to be able to export to a 30 year old 2D curve file format from our 2D vector/curve editing software. If you can import it and you're starting to target the construction industry you need to be able to export it as well. Fully and clearly explain the limitations to the DXF export that you can achieve and your customers will deal with the rest.

loooool. No they never advertised it, but it's kinda implied when you have a photoshop clone, an illustrator clone, and a publisher clone and off them as a packaged deal.

Yeah, na, I could export all of my flat files from Blender in .svg and run them through a DXF converter and still be within our +/- 1/32" cut tolerance. With structural steel it's all just squares or circles anyway... What I'm saying is when people try and bash software for "not being accurate enough because it's not a CAD program" they don't really get how accurate those programs are to begin with and how much tolerance there is in the real world when building stuff. Not everything needs super exact CAD precision. The issue is there's plenty of machines that only take DXF files to cut profiles. So if you're designing something that needs to get cut by one of those machines your final deliverable is a DXF. If you're using splines to design your files the accuracy of those curves most likely aren't critical as long as it all comes out smooth in the end. So if they got a "Good enough" spline to DXF export and let the designer know that there might be some discrepancies between the source file and the output that would solve all of our DXF woes. I've used a few sketchy paid german DXF (CAD-KAS and others) conversion/cleanup tools and they'll get "good enough" files from SVGs even. Their interfaces are all terrible and it takes a bit of time to get a good result though.

Yeah, news flash, the guys taking your AI files are just converting them over to DXF if they're using any sort of industrial cnc. They just have a workflow in place that has given them acceptable results and don't mind taking the "risk" that their conversion process will degrade the cutting file. Most companies I've dealt with would prefer not to have those extra steps that might introduce errors into the final cut product that they'd then have to re cut to make it right. They really prefer to take something that'll work if they plug it straight into their machines and if the file is messed up it's your fault and not theirs. Also after saying all that I have to laugh every time people say "ThIs DeSiGn sOfTwArE is nOt CAD" because the accuracy you get from the "artistic" software, 2D or 3D, is more than enough for 90%-95% of things that are built. Unless you're machining an engine or building nuclear or something like that getting results that are +/- 0.5mm are perfectly acceptable, especially for artistic things. The biggest problem is when splines get converted to poly lines and lose their curvature. Honestly a whole building could be fully designed in Blender and built off of a 3D poly model and nobody would notice any inconsistencies with the design files due to Blender "Not being CAD". With single point float I think you could have 8km cubed of 0.1mm accuracy before you start seeing degradation in your design...

Yeah this is completely ridiculous that there's no export for DXFs. I'm on the bandwagon that it's basically useless to be able to import DXFs without the export function. Is there an API for Designer 2? There are plenty of cases where only DXF files can be used and that's what I deal with daily. In all steel industrial cutting applications the machines/nesting software only read DXFs and often the operators /programmers are too computer illiterate to be able to convert over an SVG with the proper scaling to have a workable file. And then the SVG files might have spline based curves which again the industrial machines can't read because they're stuck in the late 80s and have to have mathematically written arcs and line. I think I've tried basically every SVG converter software by now. Even some sketchy paid German programs. Some of them have been somewhat useful for cleaning the files but are all super clunky. I was excited to see that Designer 2 could import DXFS. then trying to export it. FFFFRRNNT nope. I guess I'm stuck with the Affinity to Fusion to DXF export pipeline still.