Towne Technologies, Inc.

6-10 Bell Ave., P.O. Box 460

Somerville, NJ 08876 USA

Phone:(908) 722-9500 Fax: (908) 722-8394

 

CAD Design Rules / AutoCad -DXF File

 

DRAWING ENTITIES SUPPORTED

Lines, Arcs, Circles, Polylines, Polygon, Test, Trace Solid, Donut, Inserts, Ellipse.

NOTE: Polylines with width will have a radius on the end or ends equal to 1/2 the polyline width.

 

DRAWING ENTITIES NOT SUPPORTED

Hatch, Shape, 3D, Point, Sketch, Dimensions, CLOSED Polylines With WIDTH.

 

BLOCKS

Blocks created from the above supported entities are supported.

 

CLOSED FIGURES ONLY

The AutoCAD file must consist of only closed figures. Interior and Exterior must be completely separated by the figure's boundary. Be very careful with arcs. Make sure that arcs are connected to the other segments of the figure using OSNAP.

 

INTERIOR OF CLOSED FIGURES SHOULD BE CONNECTED

Watch out for ambiguous figures that look correct on the screen display but are drawn in an illegal fashion. It is very difficult with AutoCAD to know how a figure has been drawn.

EXTRA VECTORS AND OVERLAPPING VERTEX

Extra Vectors can often trigger an error and are not always visible because they are under another vector. If the vector is out by itself the error is not usually fatal. However, in many cases the vector is touching one of the figures to be patterned and can often cause a different figure to be generated than the one intended.

Overlapping vertexes should be eliminated using either the fillet command (radius 0) or trim command or extend command from AutoCAD. You will not need to do this if OSNAP or SNAP is always used as recommended.

ISLANDS

Islands (isolated areas) must be surrounded and defined by one or more closed figures.  They cannot be drawn in the same manner as you would for controlling a pen plotter or cutting machine.  To create an island one must draw it in a way that the program will correctly interpret.

  1. One way to realize an island is to surround it with 1 or more closed figures. Make sure that the two closed figures do not share a single vector, since it will be assigned to only one of the closed figures, and the other figure will be considered "open".
  2.  Another method to realize an island is to go into the interior of your polygon and out again via the same path, yielding a single closed figure.  This is easier to illustrate than to describe in words. Be careful when editing such a figure.
Note that the island itself is not a closed figure.  It is simply an area defined by the edges of the surrounding figure(s).