corel draw circle

[stray cat]

I am using corel draw x5, could some one tell me how to draw a prefect circle, when i draw one and save it and it turns into, a circle with jagged edges. thanks

[SignTorch Vector Art]

Hold control key while dragging makes it round.

Are you saving to DXF and it comes back as a lot of small line segments?

[stray cat]

yes i am saving it dxf and when i save it, it adds at least 20 nodes.

[SignTorch Vector Art]

normally you'd 'save' your work in corel CDR format, then only export DXF for cutting

because corel doesn't fit arcs to curves for dxf output, it simulates arcs with small line segments

most programs work that way, only a handful can do a good job of fitting arcs to curves

[weldguy]

As Gary said, always refer to your original CDR file when editing the design and re-export the file as a DXF when ready to cut.

When you export as a DXF in CorelX5 you are provided with options as to which version of DXF you want it saved as, you may be using R11 which is fairly old.

If your plasma table can handle R13 or newer DXF files then you should get much smoother profiles saving them in that format over R11 or older.

[stray cat]

Thanks for the help guys. my program will only let me use 11 so i'm kinda stuck. thanks any way.

[trucks1948]

My corel x5 lets me save in R13 and r14 plus a lot of others>Jim

[weldguy]

If you want I can upload a R13 DXF of a circle and see if your machine will take it.

If it works I see Corel X5 is available on the PSpider for half what I paid for it

Weldguy

[stray cat]

if you want to, unless i'm doing something wrong, i have corel 5 and i use we-cim for my tool path and it just comes up blank on 11 and higher.

Thanks Greg

[SignTorch Vector Art]

later versions of DXF (sometime after autocad 12) introduced spline entities which are not compatible with most cnc software

in corel, if you have curved objects and export to any later version of DXF then the DXF will have splines

if you have no curved objects only straight line segments, or if you export to an early version of DXF, the dxf will not have splines, and all curves will be converted into segmented polylines (small connected line segments)

simply export to the earliest possible version of DXF to avoid splines and it should work

if you have corel x3, it only exports later dxf versions which converts curves to splines

without splines, corel tends to create more nodes than necessary for cutting, and it does not support DXF with arcs

so, if your cnc software supports splines, by all means use them, they're smoother than non-splined DXFs (without arcs)

but if your software doesn't recognize splines, just use the older DXF versions