importing shapes for engraving

[eckj]

Hello,

We have recently started using an LS6090 for model making and other bits and pieces. It's working excellently with really good results when cutting various materials. We're having a bit of trouble importing drawings to use for engraved areas though, so wondered if anyone might be able to help.

We use microstation as our main CAD package (it's much the same as autocad), exporting drawings to DXF to then import into Lasercut 5.3. This is working perfectly for cutting, but when trying to import files with shapes for engraving we are having problems. Either nothing is imported, or an error message pops up telling us to explode autocad hatches.
It seems that no matter what we do to the original drawing file, we can't get a joined up shape into Lasercut, meaning that the engraving function won't work with imported drawings. We can draw shapes in Lasercut, or unite lines to create shapes that can be engraved, but this isn't really a very good solution.

Any ideas?
Does anyone use microstation or autocad to produce drawings, or is illustrator a more reliable way to get information into Lasercut?

Cheers

Eck

[Daven]

Hi Eck,
Yes - don't use hatches or fills - just use a normal polyline for the shape and set it to an engrave layer when imported to Lasercut. Working in from the out side each line is on/off - so say you want a polo mint shape have one circle which is on the next inner circle is off and does not engrave.

I use BricsCad which is very like AutoCad that I used to use

Best
Dave

[eckj]

Thanks Dave. We have been using normal polylines for shapes (as well as various other types of enclosing lines), but they either don't appear, or the error message is displayed.
We'll try running the dxf through illustrator and autocad, as it may be a microstation specific issue.

Ta
Eck

[Daven]

Autocad is best

Cheers
Dave