Turn a CAD drawing into a toolpath locally, with arcs kept exact.
Drawing units
The file declares its units: mm.
Cut size
170 mm × 140 mm
Geometry
Exact arcs
4
Exact lines
4
Approximated
0
Every move came straight from the drawing: lines as G1, arcs and circles as real G2/G3. Nothing was traced and nothing was approximated.
Paths
4
Cut distance
498 mm
Travel distance
403.9 mm
No. A block reference is resolved from the drawing's BLOCKS section and placed with its own rotation, scale and grid repeat, so an array of holes drawn as one block comes out as an array of holes. A block scaled evenly keeps its circles as exact arcs; scaled unevenly a circle really is an ellipse, so it is subdivided and counted as approximated.
Yes, and by a measurable amount. A DXF stores a circle as a centre and a radius, so it is written as a real G2 or G3 with no error at all. Tracing gives you chords instead: at the 12-degree step a flattened preview uses, a 25 mm circle already sits 0.137 mm off the true curve, and that error is roughly 0.55% of the radius, so it grows with the part. It is also far less code. The sample drawing is 13 moves as exact geometry against 51 as chords.
Then the tool says so instead of guessing. $INSUNITS is read from the header when it is there, and when it is not you choose, with the resulting cut size in millimetres shown next to the choice so a wrong one is visible before anything is cut. An inch drawing cut as millimetres comes out 25.4 times too small.
Yes. A DXF encodes those as a bulge on the vertex, and each one is written as a real arc rather than being flattened into a straight chord.
No. The tool is switched off before every repositioning move. Travel uses a tool-off G1 rather than G0 on purpose: GRBL ignores the F word on a rapid and uses its own configured maximum, which would turn the travel setting on this page into a label that changes nothing.
No. The file is read and converted in your browser, and nothing is sent anywhere.
