S_Metzger

I think it's pretty clear that DXF import/export to/from Affinity Designer is probably never going to happen. This feature has been requested loudly and strongly for 6+ years now and there is the occasional "thinking about it", or "possible in the future" comment from the company, but no action. If they were going to do it, it would have been done by now. 6 years?!?! That's longer than the Manhattan project. Professional engineering applications require this, so apparently that is not their market, otherwise it would have been done long ago. It's a real shame as I would have happily dropped my Adobe subscription half a decade ago-as I am guessing many others would as well. I tried forcing myself to use Affinity and PSTOEDIT to do the conversion (from DXF to PDF anyway), but that's only half the problem and adding external tools to the workflow costs time and effort and sacrifices accuracy and quality. Every 6 months to a year I will check to see if this has been added to the tool, but alas; no. That Affinity Designer Icon in my apps folder never gets clicked any more.

Well, back again to do my less-and-less frequent check of Affinity Designer release updates to see if DXF in/out support has been added. Nope. It's been 4-5 years that I have been requesting this. Others have been at it longer. So very disappointing. There's such a large Maker community that would jump on board. More importantly you would find your way into hardcore commercial engineering operations with that one feature. Some marketing person needs to stop thinking about the shape of the calligraphy brush and consider the opening of new markets for the SW tool entirely. Tweaking the UI and adding new mask modes may delight existing users who are using the tool already, but it will not open up new applications and sales to you. Step back and consider the big picture, people! You guys have been great about providing updates free-of-charge, but since I do not use the tool in the first place because it lacks this feature (DXF in/out), it makes no matter, nor do I recommend it for my business and others.

When Affinity Designer first came out (years ago now) I was extremely excited to have an apparently viable alternative to Illustrator and their crazy subscription $$$. The lack of DXF/DWG import/export in Affinity has left it unusable for me or my engineers/graphics people. People will suggest laundering your data through Inkscape or other hacky methods to export/translate/import. All are unsatisfactory and add steps or inaccuracies to what should be an extremely simple, native process. Every 6 or 9 months I have checked to see if anything has changed - but nothing ever does and the developers are off on other tools where they will probably make more money. Designer has been stagnant for years and years now. My market is unaddressed. It IS sad. Such promise and such possibility to capture the engineering/graphic applications and the whole maker world with laser cutters and all that will be unrealized. I would happily pay for an upgrade to get this capability, but it's just not going to happen with Affinity. If you troll through the forums and blogs, there is a comment buried in there by an Affinity person somewhere stating that it is unlikely that native DXF/DWG import/export will ever happen. Sorry.

BUMP. DXF Import/Export please! There are a ton of DXF Import/Export requests in these forums. If it is never going to happen, please let me know so I can just delete my purchased copy of AD, instead of checking back every few months, only to find more user requests in these forums and no response. I remain hopeful, but have no use for the tool if it cannot import/export DXF. I would pay for an upgrade if the capability was added. Instead, I have to give my money to Adobe.

I'd like give this thread a bump. I check back on Affinity Designer every couple of months to see if anything has been done about DXF import/export. Nope. Every now and again someone new comes in to these forums and asks about DXF and gets a response about it being "on the roadmap" or some such, but people (myself included) have been asking about it for 2+ years. Doesn't really seem important to Affinity. I have tried the various "workarounds" - PDF in and out - maybe my cad tool isn't the greatest PDF writer, but information is lost or not scaled properly. .DXF to SVG through Inkscape - cumbersome process, many steps, and prone to data loss/change or mis-scaling. Reading my CAD-generated DXF into AI, adding/editing the artwork, then exporting a DXF to my laser shop, or an EPS to the print shop just works - no muss, no fuss. It just kills me to pay Adobe over and over again. Paying the CC charge is onerous for a tool I only use once every couple of months. I want to move away from them. I am guessing there are plenty of commercial customers in the same boat as me - as well as the entire world of "Makers" whom I bet would jump in if DXF worked well. However, hacking through a set of improvised steps to get into and out of AD with multiple tool dependencies isn't going to cut it as a replacement for a production tool. I would happily pay an upgrade to Affinity Designer to get native DXF ability into a new version of the tool. I like the interface and want to start using it. I just can't without this capability. Hey, Affinity! Any solid news on DXF capability?

Please please please add DXF import/export. There are so many users you would pick up in the CAD and fabrication world. That is the one universal standard for getting vector information between apps.

Maybe quantity of posts will help with this feature request: I absolutely NEED DXF import to make Affinity useful to me. I keep an ancient copy of Illustrator around simply because it does this. My application is for the silkscreening and label generation for electronic products. My CAD tool is SpaceClaim - a wonderful tool for usability, but very limited in terms of things it exports. DWG/DXF is the only usable vector format it will export. Very detailed and relatively complex information is exported in the DXF, exactly to scale. That is the aspect that needs to be preserved. If I export as PDF, I lose the scale. I cannot capture as raster files and reconvert as information is lost and it is not accurate enough to do what I need. I have read other posts and it sounds like others wish to do exactly as I. I periodically check on Affinity to see if this capability has been added. Until it is added, I cannot switch over to it from Illustrator - and believe me, I WANT to move away from Illustrator. I regret not having checked this exact capability before actually paying for Affinity Designer. I just assumed it HAD to be there. I like the looks and the promise of the Affinity Designer tool, but without this key capability (DXF import), I cannot yet use it or recommend its use to my peers.