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[Affinity Designer] How to export a DXF file?


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On 2/9/2021 at 10:03 PM, Raphie said:

That's simple, because for the rare occasions that you required to export DXF files or bitmap tracing, worth saving over $700 per year on subscription alone. I believe Affinity Designer will have this in the future, in the meantime, the time I spend exporting to another application is less expensive than a subscription. Even if you charge premium for your time.

NOW TO BE FAIR

If you constantly required to export DXF files would be obvious that Illustrator is your best option. There are many things Illustrator has that I do miss, like the 3D tools. If your workflow depends on these then is obvious that you will have to invest annually or monthly in an Adobe subscription.

As an career Illustrator, there are things that I consider are essential for me and I can say for sure, Affinity Designers along with Publisher and Photo has become an essential tool. The simple fact that by opening Affinity Publisher to generate content give me the liberty of not having to have Photo and Designer running, since I can change to each of it's tools from inside Publisher, that's a big time saving for me. This pair with the other fact that I can save a project on my OneDrive and then open it on my iPad, even if it is not a Publisher file, I can still keep working on this project on Designer for iPad, then come back to Publisher all with the same file. Try do that with InDesign.

Your case might be different, but as an long time Illustrator, Designer, in my opinion, is way superior than Illustrator.

That is an excellent reply.  This coming from a Ai user for years and now considering AD.  I use Ai for laser cutting as well.  Taking the extra step of converting to dxf aint a biggie for now.

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On 2/9/2021 at 2:03 PM, Raphie said:

That's simple, because for the rare occasions that you required to export DXF files or bitmap tracing, worth saving over $700 per year on subscription alone. I believe Affinity Designer will have this in the future, in the meantime, the time I spend exporting to another application is less expensive than a subscription. Even if you charge premium for your time.

NOW TO BE FAIR

If you constantly required to export DXF files would be obvious that Illustrator is your best option. There are many things Illustrator has that I do miss, like the 3D tools. If your workflow depends on these then is obvious that you will have to invest annually or monthly in an Adobe subscription.

As an career Illustrator, there are things that I consider are essential for me and I can say for sure, Affinity Designers along with Publisher and Photo has become an essential tool. The simple fact that by opening Affinity Publisher to generate content give me the liberty of not having to have Photo and Designer running, since I can change to each of it's tools from inside Publisher, that's a big time saving for me. This pair with the other fact that I can save a project on my OneDrive and then open it on my iPad, even if it is not a Publisher file, I can still keep working on this project on Designer for iPad, then come back to Publisher all with the same file. Try do that with InDesign.

Your case might be different, but as an long time Illustrator, Designer, in my opinion, is way superior than Illustrator.

Yeh most  Fiber Lasers now need DXF, and to bad as I  bought affinity thinking it would be a good alternative as advertised.. and it is complete useless to me period, no DXF export really?  

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8 hours ago, Flashoser said:

I  bought affinity thinking it would be a good alternative as advertised.

None of the Affinity applications have been advertised as being able to export to DXF as they have never been able to do so and, as such, that would have been false advertising.
Where did you get the idea that they could?

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4 hours ago, GarryP said:

None of the Affinity applications have been advertised as being able to export to DXF as they have never been able to do so and, as such, that would have been false advertising.
Where did you get the idea that they could?

No need to be so defensive, but...

Well it was advertised as this: 

No bloat, no gimmicks, just all the tools you need, implemented how you always dreamed. Affinity Designer is a stripped back, pro-end workhorse that will always get your job done, As complex as you like, workhorse that will always get your job done, Switch between full featured vector, Rock solid vector tools, Comprehensive vector toolset, Advanced file support.

Along with all the statements I did about, it being a great AI alternative...

Now advertising as we all know it can be a funny gimmicky thing i guess..sometimes folding us in some instances. as it did me... I guess like in the fine print, and clever adverts, it did not have to mention DXF specifically, while it made you think it would..  as it did for me. 

While i am new to design really knew, and not really knowing i might need it down the road like I need now, I bought it lol...

 

 

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I didn’t mean to sound defensive, I was just curious as to why you thought that DXF export might be a possibility.

If some review or blog (or something similar) told you the software could export to DXF then Serif may have needed to ask the owner of the article to modify it as the article would be saying something that wasn’t true, leaving Serif to defend itself against other people’s false statements.

As it is, as you say, you seem to have succumbed to a successful ‘marketing ploy’ and there’s not much anyone else can do about that. (I have my own ‘issues’ with the wording on the website but there’s nothing much I can do about it either.)

Where in the official Serif marketing does it say “it being a great AI alternative”? I can’t see that mentioned anywhere but I haven’t done an exhaustive check.

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That was quoted exactly of course from Serif's own website, then other people out there saying they bought it as an alternative to AI, the both combined made me assume it would do all file formats i guess.. 

Like you said a successful marketing campaign along with people saying ti was a great alternative or them instead of AI..did me in, but its nto a big deal it was cheap at least.. just super disappointed, as i was really hoping to get to it so to speak and make it my main design program.. now I am left with silhouette  BE still... 

I never said serif said a feat AI alternative..by the way.. I said  "I  bought affinity thinking it would be a good alternative as advertised.." as advertised meaning by the way they advertised it which i showed their rotes, i was not looking specifically for DXF at the time..or any format actually,  just assumed it would be all of them like AI, ..based on groups and others stating it was a great alternative for them to AI.

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Now I think Coral Draw i am going to go after at $500 just to get the DXF format...and not sure if that even, as i am not well versed in any of this stuff..I just am doing simple svg designs and tis EASYCAD2 needs DXF apparently as it does not like SVG input from what I am reading..maybe conversions are ok but again i don't know much if stye are just as good.

It jus made sense to me at Affinity would have them all also, why not is my thinking on that, .and i am sure i am not the only one that thought that.

 

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There are apparently lots of SVG to DXF converters out there so it might be worth trying a few – most have trials and some are free – and seeing if they do what you need before spending lots of money just for this functionality. (I’ve not used that format since I used AutoCAD, and that was a long time ago.)

On the other hand, if you need to know that your DXF will come out exactly as you specified in the original drawing then, if I was in your shoes, I might be more than tempted to use an application that exported to DXF natively so I could be much more confident that I was getting precisely what I wanted. I wouldn’t like to find out that something came through the process wrong and I didn’t notice it until the point where the problem suddenly became very expensive to fix.

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Just now, GarryP said:

and seeing if they do what you need before spending lots of money just for this functionality

... Just as it would be appropriate to do with Affinity - after all, this is also why Trial versions are offered to test whether the software can do what the user thinks or assumes, or what someone has written somewhere on the web.

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I am slightly mystified by this thread.

I looked on the website of the Open Design Alliance (www.opendesign.com), who make libraries for reading and writing .dwg & .dxf files.

In their list of members under Founding and Corporate is Serif!

Unless this information is very out of date, I am confused why they would be a paying member and not using the libraries that would enable both import and export of CAD files, weird.

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25 minutes ago, Dahzee said:

I am confused why they would be a paying member and not using the libraries that would enable both import and export of CAD files, weird.

Serif legacy (Plus) application?

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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To be honest I would be happy if they finally managed to get SVG export to work as intended and not producing the garbage it does. But as it doesn’t even produce a decent SVG file, the converters out there won’t be much help either... 😓

 

Cheers from Frankfurt!

Theo

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DXF / DWG support are sorely needed, please add this in the future 🙏. Interoperability with CAD tools is not a niche use case and very much constitutes "advanced file support" and is necessary to enable a complete vector design workflow for many creators. I love AD for number of reasons, but this is a meaningful limitation.

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Welcome to the forums @JLAM

There is currently no support for DXF import/export and we won’t know if that will change in the future until/if it appears.

You can keep up-to-date on this issue by following this thread https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/71071-latest-affinity-releases-on-each-platform-by-store/ and reading the release notes for new versions of the software as they appear.

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Welcome to the forums @Flow Bee

As can be seen in the “Professional Colour, Compatibility, and Output” section of the “Tech Specs” for each application on the main Affinity website, there is no DXF export functionality, but there is some DXF import functionality (which isn’t currently listed on that web page).

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1 hour ago, GarryP said:

which isn’t currently listed on that web page

It is only mentioned in What's new, so it would like to add it to Tech specs.

image.png.1b2337658fe015a0121e0424993dc42e.png

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

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