Pro-tip: If you fill in one value to scale your object, you can scale it proportionately by clicking the ‘…’ button on the other value.

It will show the length and height (well, it calls them both “length”) and some boxes where you can type in new values. (Anyway, I forgot to set colors for some objects, but we’ll touch on that later.)Īfter importing your file you can check the size of it using the “Size” button in the toolbar to bring up the size dialog when your object is selected. You’ll notice that the lines in the file are all black, well, actually they are all red here, as they are highlighted because they are selected.

If that happens, just quit and relaunch it. Also, occasionally LaserCut 5.3 will not import a file, or will get an error. Files seem to import fine even when this shows up. When importing the DXF file into LaserCut 5.3 it may show some weird dialog. (We’ll double check the imported size later to make sure it worked properly.) One more nice thing about Inkscape is that it’s easy to switch between millimeters and inches (or other units) on the fly while drawing. I believe there is still a bug in Inkscape that will screw things up if you choose millimeters for the export. I create my files using millimeters for units, and then export the DXF with pixels (px) specified. Don’t select either option when outputting from Inkscape to import into LaserCut 5.3. While the LWPOLYLINE option sometimes works, it sometimes causes issues. :) I’ve avoided selecting the ROBOMASTER option, as that does strange things to DXF files. In the image above you’ll see a file being exported from Inkscape as a DXF file for a “Desktop Cutting Plotter” which, I guess, is one way to describe a laser cutter. I won’t go too deep into using Inkscape for laser cutting, as it’s a topic I’ve covered before, and besides having to use DXF files instead of PDF files, nothing else has really changed. I’ve been using LaserCut 5.3 to control a G.Weike LC1390N Laser Cutter, and since I use Inkscape to create my files, I thought I’d go over a few of the settings I use so that in the future when I forget I can read this post.

Inkscape dxf not showing up