View and edit a DXF file in your browser

Open it#

1. Drop the DXF on the box above, or open cicada and press Import.
2. cicada reads the drawing in your tab, keeps its layers and zooms to fit.
3. A message says how many objects came in, which were approximated and which were skipped, and in which unit the drawing was made.

It does not matter much which program wrote the DXF. AutoCAD, LibreCAD, QCAD, FreeCAD and Inkscape all write the same text format.

What comes through#

• lines, arcs, circles and ellipses
• polylines of both kinds, with their curved segments turned into real arcs
• splines, drawn as the curve through their control points
• hatches, as their boundary outline
• solids and traces, filled unless the drawing turns FILLMODE off
• text and multi-line text
• blocks, with base point, rotation, scale and mirroring
• linear, aligned and ordinate dimensions
• layers with their colours, and whether they are hidden or locked
• line weights of objects and layers, drawn when the file turns LWDISPLAY on

Leaders and images are skipped and named in the message. A hatch shows its boundary, not its pattern. Binary DXF opens too, at every version.

Units come from the file's $INSUNITS setting and are converted to millimetres. When a file does not say, cicada assumes millimetres and tells you it assumed.

Change it#

Everything you opened is ordinary geometry. Snap to end points, middles, centres and intersections, draw lines and polylines, trim, extend, offset, fillet and add dimensions. Layers can be shown, hidden and locked. Undo goes back step by step.

The command line works like AutoCAD's: type L for a line, then points such as 100,50 or @40,0. The other short commands follow AutoCAD too, like O for offset, TR for trim and F for fillet. Ctrl K lists every command.

Save it#

Export gives you two files:

• DXF, written in the newest DXF release, R2018 (AC1032), which current CAD, CAM and laser programs read.
• SVG, which a browser, Inkscape or Illustrator opens. It is also cicada's own project format: open the SVG in cicada again and you get your layers and settings back.

So cicada also converts: DXF to SVG for the web or a vinyl cutter, and SVG to DXF for CAD.