FreeCAD Tutorial - Basics - DXF Import

FreeCAD Tutorial using the Draft, Sketcher and Part Design Workbenches to import a DXF file and create a solid model. This tutorial was made using FreeCAD 0.19.
Links:
- FreeCAD Website: www.freecadweb.org/
- FreeCAD Forum: forum.freecadweb.org/

[@wjohnsaunders]

Just what I was looking for. Given the path through several workbenches and magic icons I would never have worked that out for myself!

[@StratosApostolou]

Simply comprehensive and useful tutorials. The best way to learn FreeCad.Thank you!

[@hisrealconstruction9623]

That was the BEST tutorial in FreeCAD that I have viewed. Very concise, great flow and speed.

[@jothain]

Beautiful. One of the things I've thought I should try to struggle figuring out. My sincerest thanks 10/10

[@ahrengroesch8774]

I have been trying to figure out how to do this for a week. Thank you.

[@specialservicesequipment393]

0.20 FreeCAD allowed me to select the whole thing and create a single sketch. Thank you for the tutorial, this helps allot with designing things, being able to get the .dxf files for parts and fasteners into my designs.

[@brucewilliams6292]

I really appreciate the video. I have struggled to do this for a while. Thank you.

[@rennkitllc6800]

Nicely done. Clean, simple, well explained. Also picked up a few keyboard shortcuts. Thank you.

[@murraymacdonald4959]

Great stuff. Please keep making more freecad content. Despite being a workbench safari, your explanations were excellent and easy to understand. Thank you!

[@DanielWood]

Thanks for kind feedback! Much appreciated!

[@brettparker9847]

Fantastic video. Really concise and to the point. Really worthwhile video. Keep it up!

[@hoki4381]

Minor optimization: You can also select both Wire objects and then do Draft2Sketch, resulting in a single sketch right away

[@Nooblenin]

I enjoyed your pacing and explanation and steps you went through, this was exactly what I was looking for thank you

[@MarthamEngineering]

Thank you for taking the time to leave such wonderful feedback!

[@alpharesearch2]

Great tutorial! Thanks for adding all the improvements.

[@manuelmartinez6675]

Muchas gracias. Aunque no tengo ni idea de inglés, lo has explicado tan bien que lo he comprendido perfectamente.

[@peterismobiel]

Great and easy to understand tutorial!

[@justiciaparaespana7236]

Thank you!!! I was scraching the head a lot of time.

[@KnobbyHobby4130]

Very clear and concise tutorial thank you.

[@CarlosGarcia-cw9cu]

Thanks for your time doing this tutorial. It's very helpfull!

[@thexflies1867]

Thank you, you just saved my time!

[@saschametz6480]

Thank you very much! That was exactly what i needed!

[@bobbonham4823]

Thanks for your tutorials.They are and have been very helpful.

[@MarthamEngineering]

Hearing that makes it worthwhile! Thank you.

[@MarkDiehr]

Just found this super useful as well. I was really confused when the DXF imported as a bunch of individual shapes intead of a single sketch. Baffling default behavior!

[@alveslopescnc1890]

Fantastico... simples e muito bem explicado... parabéns 😀

[@GeckoCycles]

Just what I needed. Good job.THX

[@andrewluger7133]

Excellent tutorial, a great help, thanks

[@oscarandrade3014]

Wow. Perfect job. Thanks

[@mebra_homeshop]

Great video, thanks for sharing

[@samuelmaduna8964]

Wow thank you soooooo much!!

[@pieyed1302]

Your videos have been very helpful in teaching me some of the basic elements of FreeCAD. I noticed that your latest video was about 11 months ago. I was just wondering if you have any new ideas for another video or two? You’re an excellent instructor and you make it very easy to understand, to some of us slower folks, what we can do in FreeCAD. Myself, being older and a newbie at 3D printing and CAD, am amazed every time you click a button on the toolbar and I find out about a “new” feature that eliminates the dozens of sketches I create that you duplicate in 2 or 3 clicks! Thank you so much for all the work you’ve done to create these videos.

[@MarthamEngineering]

Hi Tom, thankyou for such wonderful feedback. I do intended to make more videos. I also work on FreeCAD so it's difficult to divide time between writing code and making videos.

[@emilymechner3932]

@@MarthamEngineering Same here, I am a newcomer to CAD, and not very young, and I found this video extremely clear and helpful. I had struggled to modify designs that came in DXF files, and now I know what to do! I hadn't looked much at the draft workbench before and now I realize it contains some essential tools. I wonder if you could do a video on how to export DXF's of one's own sketches. Once I've made a body using part design, how do I peel off a drawing of a single face (to use in outside CAM software to set up a cnc router program)? I have successfully followed a tutorial to use the techdraw workbench to export a view of the whole body, but how can I do this with first one face, then another face? Maybe you've already done a tutorial on this or know of a good one that you could refer me to. Thank you so much for your work on FreeCad! What an amazing resource for all of maker humanity.

[@MarthamEngineering]

Great idea for a video! Thank you for your feedback.

[@wayback3214]

좋은 동영상 감사합니다.

[@vitalijmandik1565]

Thank you so much!!!

[@flyingoutfittersaviation3745]

Excellent! Thanks!

[@xavierbischoff2003]

Thank you! It helped me a lot:))

[@otaciliodearaujo]

Thank you very much!!!

[@olivierherce2855]

many thanks !!!!!!!

[@nams37]

Thank you so mush sir

[@ThatsSoM0]

chad. Thank you!

[@jokerpeak119]

Bro thank you very much

[@dentonlister]

Thank you!

[@banner5432112345]

PERFEKT :-)

[@gregwoolley]

Great!

[@uccoskun]

This is an amazing tutorial. thank you for putting it together. Can you do a demo to place a sketch from an dxf drawing on a surface, not on xy plane please?

[@tomws6336]

Great tutorial. Very clear presentation, well arranged, and I like how you present various ways to do something as part of a natural progression. One oddity I had (besides my DXF scaling was in the wrong units) was that there was one segment missing from the imported DXF. If I open the DXF in QCad, the segment is there, but if I simply import into FreeCad (Win7 v0.19.22756) the segment is missing. This occurs on two different DXF files downloaded from 8020. Not a big deal as I was able to add the missing segment in sketcher, but it is curious...

[@GeckoCycles]

Similar thing. Missing geometry error yet the drawing is fully constrained until I try to pad.

[@nikolakefim887]

clear view after export, no entities in the tree also

[@shipcake12]

Thank🎉🎉🎉

[@DerSolinski]

Yeah right... watch it to the end... and convert it to a sketch, not a face... right... makes life so much easier 😅 Thx mate.

[@grahamwyatt8766]

I spent several lunchtimes trying work out how to turn a dxf into a solid and failed miserably. Looking forward to using your tutorial. Wondered if you could show my next step by joining 3 solids into one. By that I mean one above the other but with the same outline

[@MarthamEngineering]

Hi Graham, I'm glad you found this video useful. When you say turn three solids in to one, do you mean loft? If so; please see my twisted vase video that covers lofts.

[@lordirek1]

So far I've made it through your recent tutorial playthroughs and they have given me a much better understanding of how FreeCAD works. I used it to build 3d models of some knife scales I want to get machined in bronze. But the machinist needs .dxf files and I'm not sure what they are supposed to look like. I've created an export, but it seems to be missing half the model. Any chance you could do a tutorial on exporting to dxf?

[@MarthamEngineering]

I can! Does the machinist need a DXF for water / laser cutting or do they want a detailed drawing?

[@lordirek1]

@@MarthamEngineering awesome, thanks so much. It'll actually be milled. I believe they'll need a detailed drawing.

[@alveslopescnc1890]

Um pequeno upgdate... Neste momento não precisa de fazer "merge sketck", basta selecionar os "wire´s" e converter direto para sketck, extrusão ocorre normalmente

[@rok1475]

Do you have a video on preparing this extrusion model for inserting into Assembly4 to construct a frame and attach parts to it? I am having difficulty creating LCS along the slots for aligning other parts

[@MarthamEngineering]

Great idea for a video!

[@johnsomerset1510]

Excellent for -DXFs, but can DWGs be imported?

[@curtismateja1604]

Very well done thank you sir. Question, is it possible to edit the dxf after converting it to a wire then to sketch? I am a waterjet operator new to freecad and cad in general, and I get asked all the time from the boss if I could manipulate clients dxf files to be one way or another. Any help or input would be greatly appreciated! Thanks again

[@MarthamEngineering]

Sketches can be edited in the skecher workbench. It's the main workflow for FreeCAD and should be covered in lots of videos online. Only issue is that dxfs can be messy and you might need to do some corrective work before they are useful.

[@curtismateja1604]

Ok I’ll keep working on it. Thank you. Generally I just have to trim lines out of the original dxf given to me,which is what I’m having trouble with.

[@wpegley]

👍

[@jimmihenry]

Great thank you! I was making a compound instead of the wire thing. However the DXF files i have from another system are tiny and i need to scale them up. Just don't know how? Can you help with a tini nice vid like this one? :).

[@MarthamEngineering]

Thanks for leaving a comment. Knowing that these videos are useful makes it worthwhile taking the time to make them!

[@0LoneTech]

The Draft workbench has a Scale tool (S C), which can generally be applied to any object, including the sketch with holes here. It asks first which point is the center of scaling, then what scale should be applied. For some reason I'm having trouble applying a fractional scale (probably a localization issue with decimal comma), but it can be done in the properties of a Scale clone (the output object if you choose clone).

[@GeckoCycles]

I get the same thing. 1.5" sq drawing is .003" wide, or should I say 3.100 thou. WTF on two levels

[@jimmihenry]

@@GeckoCycles Just tried it, load your DXF open it as Autocad or Autodesk what ever works if it works. Than select all the geometry to be scaled in the Combo View window, change the WB to Draft. Hit the "Scales and..." icon it's two squares and a arrow in them, blue icon near the sheep head. Leave the global X, Y, Z points at zero and click the enter point button. Set your scale 0,5 for X factor, Y factor, Z factor to get 1/2 the dimensions and check the Create a clone box. Hit the OK button. Finally you can export the clone! Good luck! Guess you may go with the number 500 to scale up or something like that :)

[@GeckoCycles]

@@jimmihenry I opened several DXF files created in different programs and all were very very small. I then went to preferences/import/dxf and changed the scale from 1 to 645.2 and all DXF files are opening to the correct scale now. Pain to figure out, math was not exact but very close. A half a dozen tries later from 645.16129032. LOL I tired setting to 1000 as per the drop down description but the drawings were too large for what ever reason. Drawings are drawn in .0000" I didn't want to have to figure scale every drawing. One thing I am trying to figure out is why the constraints are gone yet the sketch will pad. Going to try to make as path and see what happens

[@mangelozzi]

Must be nice when u have two parts so easily separated. Mine overlaps, tons of tiny lines, that when I try control click them eventually I accidentally unselect them all (after 10 mins of attempts) giving up.

[@johnwaynewilliamson]

my dxf shapes change to block instead of wire. any ideas?

[@bladycivilian]

If anyones interested you can do the same with SVG file

[@danielmelendrez1616]

Thank you for this amazing tutorial. However, I am running into an issue with Ver 0.19. Once I converted a group of shapes into a Wire, the resulting sketch has hundreds of unconstrained points. Is there any update on how to obtain a fully-constrained sketch?

[@stevewhite9765]

Did you figure this out, i have the same problem

[@danielmelendrez1616]

@@stevewhite9765 apologies for the super late reply. Unfortunately, no. The only solution was to re-draw 1/4 of my piece by hand (based on the original image that I was trying to convert) then just mirror and rotate everything. This might be a good _bug_ to report, perhaps?

[@danielmelendrez1616]

By any chance you found a solution for this? It is still annoying me. I am just working with a DXF with 996 DOF! Hahaha

[@erin.anderson]

@@danielmelendrez1616 It will show up that way until you do the Create Body step, afterwards you should be good to go.

[@StefanDanov]

How do you do that with a dxf file of an egg?

[@skydayang]

hello, i am using freecad 0.8 and when i select the multiple wires i made and try to make them all into one wire, freecad turns them into faces. any tip on how i can make the highlighted wires into one single wire?

[@MarthamEngineering]

I would highly recommend using FreeCAD 0.19.

[@colton75]

How did you get this? My files won't open

[@MrRaulcarricajo]

I import the files but nothing happen in my screen. Why? Thanks

[@MrPaceTv]

Hi , Can I export the file as dxf path file?

[@MarthamEngineering]

You would need to create a path setup and create the required tool paths. If your using laser or plasma; the profile or engrave tools should work as expected.

[@brettwilliams657]

Have tried numerous times to import DXF from Illustrator to FreeCad. I have changed both units in Illustrator and in the FreeCad import preferences but it always multiplies my DXF by 25.4. Have spent hours trying everything imaginable and scouring the forums to no avail. It just will not take a DXF from Illustrator in mm's as 1:1. I have even tried to reduce the import to 0,03937 and it does nothing. Annoying as hell.

[@vumba1331]

There are 25.4 mm to an inch so perhaps one of the graphics packages is in imperial units and the other mm, hence the conversion through? Just a thought.

[@feha92]

Bad tutorial, it never showed that the constraints in the original fusion360 sketch (that was exported as dxf) still remained in the freecad sketch. Also did not show _how_ it achieved that (I actually don't think it did!). Those sketches were likely unconstrained.

[@TheMysticABC]

Great tutorial Martham. To teh point and precise ! It taught me a lot. I aim to be making some wooden clock gears, and followed your tutorial to import a DXF file and take it through to CAM to create the GCODE, but I cannot get it to work. A few things I noted are that where you convert to wires using the blue UP arrow, mine converts it to blocks which I suspect may be part of where things are going wrong. On your video, the UP arrows says ... Join the selected objects into one, or convert closed wires into faces, or unites faces, but on mine (Also 0.19) it says ... Upgrade the selected objects into more complex shapes. The DXF file that I am working on is teh sample DXF gear test file at www.woodenclocks.co.uk/dxf-files/ and for now it is just the big gear that I am trying to process. Would you be able to give me any advice as to where I might be going wrong please ? Any help would breally be appreciated