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I was wondering if there's a way to export a mesh to a DXF file without Blender doing it's triangulation and get a similar result as if your mesh was a curve.

Let me elaborate what i mean. I needed a small detail to be laser cut, so i made the mesh in Blender, cos i am way more comfortable using that than Fusion 360, although i know very well, i would not be writing this post if I had used Fusion :) .

Anyway, i polymodeled my mesh and used Blender's DXF exporter add-on to export the mesh with the desired projection. No matter what i tried in the export settings I could not get the export to give me a clean drawing. Ideally you would want something like this. The ideal xdf drawing for laser cutting I also tried converting the mesh to a curve, which looked very promising in Blender but the DXF exporter simply won't export the curve no matter what export settings i use. in just gives "0 objects exported in 0.00 seconds. -----DONE-----" in the console. When i chose "lines" for "export mesh as" option i just locked Blender up for a few minutes only to return the same "0 objects" message.

The only way Blender DXF exporter worked was with a normal polygonal mesh, however it gave me something like this. It's white because it's triangulated and I had very dense geometry in the initial iteration. enter image description here For laser cutting you want lines only where you want the cutter to cut.

So my question IS: Is there a way to get an usable DXF drawing out of Blender that won't require jumping through hoops?

I however found a somewhat hacky solution that works, so in case someone is in a similar solution I'll share how I solved my situation. It involves Fusion 360.

  1. MAKE SURE YOUR TRANSFORMS ARE APPLIED!!!
  2. exported the mesh as STL
  3. Imported the mesh to Fusion 360
  4. Used Fusion's mesh conversion tools to convert it into a CAD format, essentially following this tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVGtG-UjlYg&ab_channel=ProductDesignOnline
  5. Make sure that the model is in world origin or the following step bugs out, maybe it's fixed when you try it. Easiest way to do it is to center the model on import.
  6. Project a face by selecting the desired face and hit "P" to project. Fusion then creates a sketch of that face. Finish the sketch from the small menu that pops up.
  7. Locate the sketch in the left hand side menu (in the viewport), right click on the sketch and choose "export DXF".
  8. As a check i opened the DXF up in Trueview and measured it. 1 unit = 1mm
Karl L
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  • Hello, looks to me the actual problem is not the triangulation but the fact you only want to extract the outlines of the object, which is doable with ALT + double click on an exterior edge loop – Gorgious Jul 15 '21 at 08:19
  • Dxf format doesn't support any polygon other than triangles, so the mesh will always be triangulated either way. What you want is 3D (or 2D) polylines – Gorgious Jul 15 '21 at 08:34
  • https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/56120/blender-for-cnc-what-to-export-to/56151#56151 – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Jul 15 '21 at 10:18

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