when good curves turn baaad

.. just discovered something that might be useful for others trying to import drawings from solidworks (probably applies to other CAD software too)
A real bugbear has always been that most cad software reduces nice curves to a series of lines, which makes it a) really time consuming to modify in xara, and b) makes the file larger than it needs to be.

The solution I found yesterday is to PRINT to PDF rather than export to PDF.. not sure why solidworks would do this - maybe there's a speed sacrifice with displaying PDFs that contain lots of curves.

if anyone else has solidworks, it would be great if you can confirm (it might just be the setup on my computer)

Yes, I can confirm your findings but with Sketchup.

I did a cylinder, tilted the view so I got the curved edge nicely in the view, then did the usual 2D PDF export and also a PDF print (to file).

The "printed" PDF had that curve continuos while the exported PDF's curve consisted of numerous separate line segments.

So thanks alot for the tip!

Except that (in my case) those nice continuos lines were infact compound shapes that if I used "Brake shapes" the whole line broke down to separate pieces.

So it is still baaaad IMO. Pity, because I got all excited...

I'm not sure if this will help or not. But what happens if you select all the control points in the facets/curve with the Shape Editor Tool and select Make Curve (keyboard shortcut c)?

Nothing - the line sections aren't joined, so there are no nodes to become smooth-joins.

I ^A and 'drag' (without moving) each point onto the next line to join the output of Sketchup, but it's a pain for any non-trivial drawing. Another approach is to convert lines to shapes then combine-add them, then split and throw one side of the line away.

A function to re-join line ends that are in exactly the same place would be handy.

nice tool :-) gives nice smooth curve but still keeps the same number of nodes. Is there a way to reduce the number of nodes while trying to match the same curvature?

I tried the print to pdf option on another machine as well, Markku and Bobince, and it didn't have a pdf printer setup (so it didn't come with solidworks by the look of it - it was probably inherited on that machine from Adobe creative suite/distiller).. I tried to use freeware 'cutepdf' in its absence but it breaks the curves down to lines and am therefore no better off than the normal PDF file output from solidworks !@!"£$.

The other tool you can find in the AI )) To reduce nodes quantity )

In MicroStation, you can export to dwg format. If you open the dwg file in CorelDraw, then copy and paste from CorelDraw into Xtreme, it should retain the curve with same number of nodes as the original drawing. (See attached image) No multi-lines, no extra nodes, no shapes. If Solidworks, Sketchup, etc. can export to dwg, you might have your solution (if you or someone you know has CorelDraw available). Another reason Xara should have the ability to import/export dwg/dxf files. (I know, I know, Xtreme is not a CAD program...)
- Steve

nice idea Steve ..

also looking through past threads, it seems as though autocad->dxf->openoffice draw->pdf->xara is a good workflow, and I hope it works well for those with other cad software.. solidworks however seems to be particularly badly behaved in this regard. the curve facetting issue with pdfs is a known one to Solidworks corp and is apparently going to be fixed in the next service pack. The closest I can get via the dxf into openoffice draw looks more like one of those collision scattering images from a particle accelerator.. funky:)

the lack of a DXF import into xtreme is a BIG oversight IMO. please please Xara include this with v4.x

I print Autocad to PDF with PDF995 (the only PDF printer I've found that actually prints the margins as they are set), and import the pdf into Xara. Agreed would also like to see a DWG or DXF import.