DXF - Relatively Impossible

[Peter_Witt@adobeforums.com]

What's the deal with DXF and Illustrator CS? DXF and Illustrator had a shaky relationship before, but I think the last straw was broken and DXF left the house after being fed up with Illustrators bloated, drunken tirades. I make a 6 by 6 inch square in Illustrator and it won't even export the lines in correct relation to each other. I make the same square in BobCad and it imports in Illustrator so small I can't even define the correct scale proportion (used to use %2536) because of the wonderful new feature that doesn't allow me to put it over %100. Upon scaling it up manually its just as inconsistent as before, what's the deal? Why does the best drawing program have the worst support for one of the most technically accepted and widespread formats?

[Eddie_Ostrowski@adobeforums.com]

Peter, I use a conversion program called "Cadmover" to convert DXF docs into AI. Its made by Kandu Software. Eddie

[Philo_Calhoun@adobeforums.com]

If you have Acrobat Pro, you could consider creating a pdf from AutoCAD and opening this in Illustrator.

[Peter_Witt@adobeforums.com]

I do have Acrobat Pro and I will attempt your suggestion Philo. Thanks for the comment Eddie but I'm using Il. CS which is v11 (KANDUs program stops at version 8) - nonetheless, I don't exactly think paying any amount of money for a peice of conversion software is sensible considering I already paid for the feature once when I bought Illustrator. We use alot of BobCAD around here so I'm going to start toying with AutoCAD, maybe their insidious relationship with Adobe will help ease some of these conversion woes - but probably not.

[Peter_Witt@adobeforums.com]

I guess I didn't realize 8 ) is a smiley face. How incredibly lame :(

[Harron_K._Appleman@adobeforums.com]

Yes. So is B). It's annoying as hell.

[Rick Moore]

With AutoCAD you can go into the Units dialog and set your "Drag-and-drop
scale" to Millimeters. This will give you inches-to-inches measurement when
you open the AutoCAD file in Illustrator.

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Rick Moore
Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects
512 476 7133
[url]www.bgkarchitects.com[/url]

[Timothy_Foolery®@adobeforums.com]

Stop being such big anti-emoticon grumps!

"There is no emoticon for the way I am feeling right now"

-Comic Book Guy (The Simpsons)

[Peter_Witt@adobeforums.com]

Out of everything I've googled/read on the subject I never once was lead in the direction Derrick suggested. We don't use AutoCAD but we use BobCAD and so I changed the 'working environment' of the BobCAD design to Millimeters and it imports perfectly in Illustrator. A quick switch back to inches and everything is as it was before - without any ridiculous scaling, loss of radii or any other sort of corruption. Similarly I can design as normal in Illustrator and make sure I am exporting in a millimeter setting for it to read correctly in our CAD software. Simple fix using Millimeters as a go-between. I really am greatful for your help Derrick, without you I was totally lost and getting very frustrated. You rock! :)

[Rick Moore]

Cool, that made my day

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Rick Moore
Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects
512 476 7133
[url]www.bgkarchitects.com[/url]