Plasma cutting

[vladilinsky]

Hello all,
I have been helping a local welding shop, and they force me to use AutoCad, (grrr I honestly prefer Qcad) They recently got a used old plasma cutter circa 1998. My problem is when I export a DXF from autocad and attempt to load it on the plasma computer it separates my drawing into many small lines and circles? any ideas on how to keep this from happening?

I know when i do my own work for my Machine shop and i feel like getting something water jet or plasma cut i just send, (a different company) my Qcad dxf and pick up my part a day later.

thanks
Brent

[ttrw]

Hi Brent,

To be honest, you'd be better off asking this question on an ACAD forum. There sounds like some sort of 'explode entities' thing going on, but it's hard to tell without knowing your exact set up, and not knowing or having experience with the plasma computer software/ hardware, there is little that anyone here can probably advise you on.

Have you tried contacting the Plasma computer manufacturer?

Tom

[vladilinsky]

Thanks for the reply. yeah I tried talking to the manufacturer but they flat out refused to tell me. I did figure out what had to happen though, (mostly through trial and error) i will write the procedure here in hopes that it may help someone else one day.

In the Cad program my part needed to be on 2 layers, one called piece and one called hole. piece had to be the outline of the entire part to be cut and it needed to be one long poly line. The second layer "hole" was any cut out piece from inside of the first layer. Anything here that is not a circle had to be a poly line. From there I had to import the dxf into the cad software and, the only way I could proceed from here was random key strokes until I found the correct key. which was "D" I just kept hitting d until all the parts of my DXF were on the table. then pick them all back up "u" and tell them to group. then put them back down with "d" again now it can be cut.

[ttrw]

Thanks for the reply. yeah I tried talking to the manufacturer but they flat out refused to tell me. I did figure out what had to happen though, (mostly through trial and error) i will write the procedure here in hopes that it may help someone else one day.

I can possibly understand their reasons, but on the whole I think that is pretty poor show. Some of these machines can cost a small fortune. To get a manufacturer who refuses to help is plain rude IMO.