DXF export
A sheet goes out as a DXF file that opens in any CAD program: real lines, real text, real layers, at one to one in millimetres on the paper. The file is written in the browser, so nothing is uploaded and nothing is queued.
What the file is
DXF R12
The AC1009 flavour, on purpose. It is the version every CAD program on the market still reads without complaint, including the old ones a fabrication shop actually runs.
Three entity types
Lines, text and polylines. Nothing exotic, nothing that depends on a particular application to render correctly.
Millimetres on paper
One drawing unit is one millimetre of the printed sheet, so an A1 sheet measures 841 by 594 in the file. Views are already at their chosen scale.
Text stays text
Labels, dimensions and the title block arrive as text entities you can select and edit, not as outlines converted to polylines.
The layers
Layers are the point of the export. In a CAD program the layer is what a workshop freezes to print only the drawing, or only the dimensions, so the file is written with every part of the sheet on a layer of its own, with a colour already assigned.
Always written
| Layer | Colour | What is on it |
|---|---|---|
Paper | 8 | The sheet border and the frame. |
Viewport | 8 | The boundary of each view placed on the sheet. |
Structure | 7 | The drawing itself: every bar of the model, drawn at the scale of its view. |
Dimensions | 1 | Dimension lines and their figures. |
Labels | 7 | View titles, profile tags and everything else written on the drawing. |
TitleBlock | 7 | The legend in the corner, drawn from the same geometry the screen uses. |
When the sheet carries connection details
| Layer | Colour | What is on it |
|---|---|---|
CONN-Plates | 7 | Plate and member outlines in the detail. |
CONN-Bolts | 1 | Bolts and holes. |
CONN-Hidden | 8 | Edges behind the section, written with a dashed linetype so they read as hidden in the CAD too. |
CONN-Center | 2 | Centre lines and gauge lines. |
CONN-Dimensions | 1 | Dimensions of the detail, kept apart from the dimensions of the views. |
CONN-Labels | 7 | Callouts and the detail title. |
CONN-Hatch | 8 | Section hatching. |
When the sheet carries tables
| Layer | Colour | What is on it |
|---|---|---|
SummaryTable | 7 | The project summary block: profiles, lengths, weights and their totals. |
FoundationReport | 7 | The support reactions block. |
CombinationsReport | 7 | The load combinations block. |
WindReport | 7 | The wind block. |
ConnectionsReport | 7 | The connections block. |
Only the layers the sheet actually uses are written into the file. A sheet with no connection detail carries no CONN layers, and a sheet with no wind block carries no wind layer. An empty layer in a file nobody asked for is just noise in the layer dialog on the other side.
The colour numbers are standard CAD colour indices: 7 prints black on white, 8 is grey, 1 is red and 2 is yellow. Your CAD program maps them to pen weights however your office has it set up.
Who can export
The DXF export is a paid feature, alongside the IFC export and the connections chapter of the report document. Everything else about the sheet, composing it, reading it, printing it from the browser, is not. The check is made on the server, so the padlock you see on screen and what the file contains never disagree.