Sketch Import / Export

Updated v2.5.5

At a glance

DXF import confirms source units and live Width × Height before adding standard entities
DXF export — full sketch geometry with an explicit declaration of its output units
Splines round-trip as native DXF SPLINE entities — no degrading to polylines on save (CAM workspaces still arc-fit them)
SVG import — paths and shapes into the active sketch
SVG export — clean vector output for laser setup and sign work
Send To… — push a sketch straight into Plasma, Laser, or Router as parts, no file round-trip
Region detection after import runs in the background in about a second — even artwork-dense files with hundreds of shapes

While editing a sketch, drop a .dxf or .svg file onto the viewport — or use + Import From File in the sketch panel's Import / Output section — and its geometry merges into the current sketch. Multiple files accumulate in one sketch. Parsing runs in a background worker with a progress indicator, so even enormous files never freeze the app. Image files (PNG, JPG) import as a canvas layer for tracing instead.

After the entities land, the sketch's closed regions light up as pickable filled faces. That region detection was rebuilt in v2.4.4: artwork-dense imports — dot-work panels, traced logos, decorative signage with hundreds of small shapes — that could previously stall the app for hours now finish in about a second, and the detection runs in the background so the app stays responsive regardless of sketch size. The import indicator shows "Detecting regions…" until the regions are genuinely ready. Boundary geometry is untouched — regions still come back as the exact authored arcs and lines they always did.

Import details

DXF import reads lines, arcs, circles, lwpolylines, and splines, preserving layer names and entity colors. Before anything is added, confirm the familiar Inch / MM toggle and review the live Width × Height in Preferred Units with the other unit system underneath. Inch and MM are JetCad3's two standards. A matching declaration seeds the toggle; centimeter and meter declarations convert automatically through MM and seed MM. Missing, unitless, invalid, conflicting, or genuinely unsupported metadata falls back to Preferred Units and stays visibly flagged. The final choice controls the scale, and spline-derived sizes are labeled Approx. SVG import collapses each subpath into a single polyline and simplifies near-colinear vertices — a Vectric export with 156,000 tiny line commands becomes a few hundred clean polylines, not 156,000 entities. SVG arcs come in as true arcs, so they stay G2/G3 all the way to G-code (see Entity Types).

Export

Right-click a sketch in the browser tree to export it as DXF or SVG, scaled to your preferred units so a metric part writes millimeter coordinates. DXF exports include $INSUNITS matching those coordinates, including individual layers and bulk sketch exports. Each entity keeps its layer name in the DXF, and any single layer can be exported by itself from the layer's context menu — handy for splitting cut and score geometry into separate files. The component-level export writes every sketch in a project as DXF in one pass, alongside STEP/STL/3MF for the solid bodies (see Solid Body Export).

Send To a CAM workspace

Skip the file round-trip entirely: right-click a sketch in the browser tree and choose Send To… to push it straight into a CAM workspace — Plasma, Laser, or Router — as ready-to-nest parts. Pick the target and a quantity, and the sketch imports directly. This is the one-click path for a flat pattern: Send To… on an unfolded sheet-metal sketch drops the cut outline into Plasma while the fold/bend lines (which are construction geometry) are skipped automatically, so you never hand-delete reference lines first.

An Auto Switch Workspace toggle — on by default — jumps you to the target workspace right after sending; turn it off to fire parts over and keep modeling. Your target and toggle choices are remembered between sends.

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