DXF (Drawing Exchange Format)
AutoCAD DXF is a file format, developed by Autodesk, in order to facilitate AutoCAD drawings to be opened by other CAD programs. AutoCAD's native file format is DWG (Drawing) and couldn't be opened by other CAD programs. Therefore the DXF was introduced (Drawing exchange format) as standard ASCII text files to store the vector data of the drawing. The DXF fileformat can can handle a large variety of different elements.
DXF in the LayoutEditor
The LayoutEditor supports all DXF objects which are relevant to IC/MEM layout. Other objects like 3d elements are ignored. A warning is displayed in these cases. There are a plenty of different versions of this format. Nearly every year a new one is released. In the LayoutEditor it was tried to support the most possible of it. But it is possible that there are versions, which work not properly. Please report incompatibilities to improve it.
DXF: Units
DXF file format does not store any information on units. Coordinates are just numbers. So a scaled import can easily be happened. The LayoutEditor will asume that the current setting of user units had to be used to import/export the DXF. So please adjust the user units before storing and loading it. Also there a macro to load DXF files, which will ask you for the correct units before importing it.
DXF: Handling of layernames
The DXF file format only knows layernames. By opening a DXF file the LayoutEditor analyzed the used layers. If a used layername already exist in the current setup, this layer is used. Otherwise the first unused layer is renamed.
DXF: save regular polygon as circles
The DXF file format allows to handle circles. Circles are not supported by the LayoutEditor as basic elements, there are stored as regular polygons. By activating this option any regular polygon with more than 8 points will be saved as a circle element and not as a polygon.
