DXF will not load

[Stuart Douglas]

Ive made and remade this dxf file that contains some text for a 2D sign. When I bring it into CN it locks the computer. Hard. Every time. Not sure what I have done wrong or what is causing it. Any help is appreciated, I've been tryin to get this cut for almost a week.

[Clint Buechlein]

Stuart,

That's a lot of entities. There are nearly 8000 on you chaincompout layer and almost 1300 on you chaincompin layer. With that number of entities Control Nesting is going to have a hard time processing it regardless the age of your machine. I would suggest trying to redraw eliminating as many line segments as possible. I'd take a guess that it started with polylines and whatever output it, broke it into segments for you.

-Clint-

[Stuart Douglas]

That's correct. It was a stylized text that I scaled and fit in AI, then saved as DWG for ACAD. I weeded points in the polyline down to about 1/16th of an inch to preserve the shape and form, then converted from polyline to line segments because CN doesn't like polylines. Is there a better way? I do a project like this with increasing regularity now. Is there an upper threshhold for point density that CN will tolerate? I allowed CN to try and load this file for about 5 minutes in each instance, thinking it would eventually get it (I understood that it was a lot of points) but it hangs proper every time. Not really sure what to do next. I'll try and reduce the number of points by half, but I'm not convinced it is the point count that is causing the hang yet.

[Larry Epplin]

Control Nesting has to iterate through all the entities to piece together an operation. I found some bad geometry at spots on your dxf. I modified the drawing by putting in a few long lines and correcting the non-connected spots with bad geometry. I also segregated each chain for it's own layer. It still takes some time, but it works. The more simplification you can do the better. I've attached a new file for you to try.

[Larry Epplin]

Just a note. You might get some errors for "appropriate start point not found". They should not hurt your result. Simply click OK on them.

[Will Williamson]

Go buy your self a copy of V Carve pro it will pay for itself in a couple of days.

[Stuart Douglas]

Go buy your self a copy of V Carve pro it will pay for itself in a couple of days.

I've been on the fence for while about this software, but have never had a competent person demo it. It looks like great software. I guess its time to put on the headset and roll through the tutorials.

[Stuart Douglas]

Control Nesting has to iterate through all the entities to piece together an operation. I found some bad geometry at spots on your dxf. I modified the drawing by putting in a few long lines and correcting the non-connected spots with bad geometry. I also segregated each chain for it's own layer. It still takes some time, but it works. The more simplification you can do the better. I've attached a new file for you to try.

Thanks Larry!

I cut this yesterday. I'll be painting it up today and, winter weather willing, hanging it early next week for my client.

I've a friend who has recently bought a Shark, which I understand comes with a desktop version of Vectric VCarve, so it looks like I will be diving in to the hours of tutorials over the holiday break. The DXF method is just not as full function as I had originally believed. Great in a pinch for small or one-offs, but the more work I get like this, the more I think I'll have to bite the bullet and work with the Vectric software.

[David Giesbrecht]

I have used a program like Bobcad to explode polylines to arc's which trims down segments big time.

[David Giesbrecht]

I have used a program like Bobcad to explode polylines to arc's which trims down segments big time.