DXF import dialog has fewer options, results in _tiny_ drawing with _fat_ outlines

[woefi]

Hi!

If I try to open a .DXF or .DWG drawing in Designer or Publisher 2.1.1730 I now get a simpler dialog box with a few options missing.

The resulting document is very tiny, less than a millimeter and therefor the stroke is way to fat to see anything.

The same DXF opened with 2.0.4 opens just fine.

See screenshots:

 

[Tim France]

Hi @woefi,

We made the changes to the import options because it was possible to specify combinations that would ask the app to do crazy things (e.g. make quadrillion pixel documents). In your case, I'd suggest either:

1. Turning on the hairline view mode, which will render lines without their weights, just as Autocad does. This is likely the preferable option as it means things like the measure and area tools will give you correct answers.

2. Overriding the insertion units to something larger. You could correct the measurements with a custom drawing scale after import if necessary.

Hope that helps.

Tim

[joe_l]

18 hours ago, woefi said:

The same DXF opened with 2.0.4 opens just fine.

I understand the reason for changing the import options, but are additional workflow steps really an enhancement?

[Tim France]

Hi @joe_l,

I'd suggest it is a simplification rather than an enhancement.  As well as preventing the creation of HUGE documents, the changes remove ambiguity and mean the "correct" thing is done all the time - this is what your drawing actually looks like.

Because many CAD packages don't render lines on-screen with their specified weights, it's very easy to forget to update them to something appropriate for your drawing.  The default line weight is 0.25mm so if your drawing's dimensions are sub-millimetre, you should really change your line weights to something more appropriate, but we understand that isn't always a priority when making a drawing.  We added the hairline view mode specifically for dealing with drawings which have inappropriate line weights and to make Affinity feel more like Autocad.

The ambiguity I was referring to is the "Fit Model to Page" option would apply an arbitrary scale to your drawing.  Most of the time, the page size isn't specified for model layouts in DXF files, so the software would have to default to something. While that may look nice on screen, you'd get nonsense results from things like the measure tool, or even worse, you'd get results that are almost correct, but not quite.

[woefi]

1 hour ago, Tim France said:

the "Fit Model to Page" option would apply an arbitrary scale to your drawing

In this case you are right, as this is a construction plan from a house, I don't want arbitrary measurements aka "scale to page-size". In other scenarios, where it's only about a shape it would be very handy as it saves you many steps.

But here, the main problem is, I am not the architect. I just received this file from the building company so I have no influence on the scale or line widths of the source file. Is there no way to specify a scale _on import_ ?

See Screenshot of my attempt in Illustrator CS5:
This 10000% scaling gives me a reasonable (1:100) working document for a typical house or flat, 20 meter is 20 centimeter, which fits on a sheet of paper. 

 

 

[woefi]

I know now that the draftsman (in this case draftswoman) made the error of not choosing the right scale when she exported it for me.
So now I have to resize it either by scaling the object or by resizing the document. Additionally, I set the Unit to the biggest possible, which is meters.

So, now there are other DXF import problems:

• All Lines are now dashed (why?)
• When using the page dialog to blow everything up, the scaling is not really accurate, maybe they are rounding errors because of the tiny small measurements?
• If I scale it using SELECT ALL, then TRANSFORM by entering 100000% then it's the correct length. But I then have to increase the page size afterwards too, which is annoying...  

 

[Tim France]

Hi @woefi,

The dashed lines is strange. If you can send me the file, I'll take a look,

Regards,
Tim

[woefi]

42 minutes ago, Tim France said:

The dashed lines is strange. If you can send me the file, I'll take a look,

 

I'm sorry, but this has to be an oddity with this CAD file. I now tried it with some older dxf-files, that I myself exported in the past directly from Illustrator, and they are fine.
So Thank You, and never mind!

What is still a bit annoying, is the workflow, or workaround, when opening 3rd party DXFs of which you have no influence how they were created.

One needs to be able to enter a corrective import scaling in AfDes for getting a decent sized starting point to work with.

-> Remember, with DXF, these files would sometimes be huge like landscape outlines for maps and such and the other time it would be a tiny shape for a 3d printer...