Electronics > PCB/EDA/CAD
Perfectly scale dxf printing on Linux, how?
Infraviolet:
Does anyone know a means to print a dxf file perfectly to scale, on A4 paper, from a Linux PC.
I do now want to jump through the sort of hoops involved in converting a dxf to an image (thereby losing inbuilt scale information), then putting this in to something like libreoffice (wherein one has to crudely manually scale it from whatever size Libreoffice Writer decides to import it as, and then try to line it up against scale bars on the document in an attempt to restore it to the true size), then printing from libreoffice or exporting as a pdf and printing from the pdf viewer's dialog box (I understand sometimes these, and even the paper printer itself, can sneakily insert unexpected margins on the page which usually affectscale rather than merely chopping off any parts of the design which are unprintably close to the paper edges). I absolutely cannot be fiddling around with manual scale adjustments by mouse cursor, or anything where I have to print a test of the design, measure by ruler/calipers and then use the proportion of inaccuracy to reprint. I want something which is right first time.
It is easy for me to print an stl file at the right size with a 3D printer, does anyone know an easy way to print dxf's up to the size of a sheet of A4 easily on a traditional paper printer. I particularly need to print some drilling and sawing guides to glue on to stock materials before I saw/drill them. I can easily get from the initially designed CAD data to dxf as a common 2d, scale preserving, format, but then don't know how to proceed from there to a printed page in a scale-consistent manner.
Thank you
P.S. Mods, I interpretred this to be the section for general CAD considerations, not just PCB related threads, if not, please move the thread, thanks
voltsandjolts:
--- Quote from: Infraviolet on January 13, 2025, 06:39:52 pm --- converting a dxf to an image (thereby losing inbuilt scale information)
--- End quote ---
DXF is a unit-less file format. It just has numbers and the units are in your head, mm or miles, whatever.
I use inkscape and find it very good. It can import DXF, although I haven't used it much. YMMV. Post a DXF if you want me to try it for your use case.
Kean:
I don't use desktop Linux much (mostly servers) but Inkscape is the first solution that came to mind
The other thing is to do a search on "dxf to pdf github" (or similar terms) and see what you get
e.g. https://gist.github.com/slazav/2c617b8e7ba09ec67e1e633b043f89dd
Geoff-AU:
LibreCAD works with dxf files and can print them at 1:1 scale no problem.
JohanH:
FreeCAD can import dxf files as well. But if you haven't used FreeCAD before, it can be a bit overwhelming. Plenty of search results if you google for the terms, though.
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