DXF & SVG Import
Updated v2.5.5At a glance
- All standard DXF entity types: lines, arcs, circles, polylines, splines
- Arcs of any radius stay true — preserved through the pipeline and drawn true on screen
- SVG paths imported as chained polylines with arc-preserving simplification
- Automatic chaining of entities into continuous cut contours
- Every DXF import confirms source units and shows the interpreted Width × Height before adding parts
- Spline-to-polyline conversion at configurable simplify tolerance
- Automatic winding and containment analysis classifies outer profiles, holes, and open paths
- Engrave layer detection — multi-layer files offer Cut/Engrave per layer, so marking text stays with its part
Bring cut-ready profiles into the Plasma workspace with File → Import or by dragging .dxf /
.svg files straight onto the viewport — multiple files at once works. Import runs in a background
worker, so large files chain and classify without freezing the canvas.
From entities to contours
DXF lines, arcs, circles, polylines (classic and lightweight, with bulge arcs), and splines all import; dimension graphics and block contents are deliberately skipped so annotation arrows never become cut geometry. Loose lines and arcs are chained into continuous polylines by endpoint adjacency (0.0005" tolerance), then containment analysis classifies every closed loop as an outer profile or a hole — unclosed chains stay open paths cut on center. Winding order is normalized per contour so kerf compensation lands on the correct side, and arcs survive as true arcs all the way through toolpath generation.
Splines, SVG, and simplification
Splines are converted to polylines with arc-preserving simplification at your machine's Simplify Tolerance (default 0.001"). SVG paths collapse to one polyline per subpath at the same tolerance, and files that arrive as pre-chained polylines — typical of CAM-tool SVG exports — bypass chaining entirely, so a finely tessellated gear with thousands of vertices still imports fast. Need it lighter after import? Right-click a part → Simplify… to re-tune with a live preview.
Engrave layers
Files with more than one layer prompt once — a single dialog across the whole import — with a
Cut / Engrave toggle per layer; layers named Marking, Mark, Scribe, or Engrave come
pre-toggled. Engrave layers are recognized before parts are identified, so closed letters never
become holes and nested marks never split off as phantom parts: the engraving attaches to the part
it sits on and moves with it through nesting. SVG layers import too (Inkscape layers included),
layer names survive files drawn as loose lines and arcs, and marks that land outside every part are
skipped with a note. See Engraving for the scribe setup.
Units, size, quantities, and placement
Every DXF route — File → Import, drag-and-drop, + From File, and Set Each QTY… — asks you to confirm the drawing's source units with the familiar Inch / MM toggle before adding geometry. Inch and MM are JetCad3's two standards. A matching declaration in the DXF seeds the toggle; centimeter and meter declarations convert automatically through MM and seed MM. Missing, unitless, invalid, conflicting, or genuinely unsupported declarations fall back to Preferred Units and stay visibly flagged so a bad exporter cannot silently decide the scale. Your final choice controls the import.
The same control shows the drawing's Width × Height in Preferred Units, with the other unit system underneath. Change the source units and both sizes update immediately, which makes a 100 mm part versus a 100 inch part obvious before you commit. Spline-derived sizes are labeled Approx. rather than presented as exact. SVG import is unchanged.
Ordinary imports offer Grid Layout / Keep Placement without quantity fields. Set Each QTY… adds per-part counts in the same dialog. Grid is the default. With one selected source file, Keep Placement preserves the relative arrangement of the first copy at the confirmed scale. Extra quantity copies and parts that do not fit a sheet go into staging; Keep Placement never starts auto-nesting. Multi-file imports keep independent units, warnings, and sizes and use Grid Layout.
The same workflow is available in Oxyfuel. Plasma and Oxyfuel keep their Cut/Engrave layer choices in the dialog, and extra copies remain linked to their master.