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3D -> 2D by DXF

Objective

These notes are intended to help export base drawings from a model made in DesignWorkshop® for use in almost any 2D drawing/drafting application, using the Autodesk DXF (Document EXchange) format.

It makes sense to use DXF to go from 3D to 2D when you want an accurate orthographic drawing base, and when the colors and shading in the 3D model are not important. If color and shading are more important than high-precision, then use the Object PICT format instead.

3D --> 2D Drawing Export Process

Export the drawing from a DesignWorkshop model:

In DesignWorkshop 1.1 and 1.2, only orthographic and parallel projection views --plans, sections, and elevations, plus axonometrics-- are exported.
The DXF drawing will show the wireframes of all the objects which are visible when you export. The view is determined by the current view on screen when you export. All the object phases are converted to DXF layers.
First hide any and all objects whose lines you don't want to see in the exported drawing using whatever views are most convenient, and then go to the desired view for exporting.
- For instance, to create a plan view from a model of a multi-story building, first go to an Elevation view. Then drag a low, wide selection box, just around the slab and furnishings of the floor whose plan you want. This selection box will also select the walls for that floor level, which you also want. Hide these objects, and then Invert Hide. Finally, go to the Plan view, Hide any other clearly extraneous objects, and then Export the plan.
- To create a Section or an Elevation, use a simillar approach. First go to the Plan view, and drag a narrow selection box touching the objects whose linework you want to see in the section or elevation drawing. Hide these objects, and then Invert Hide. Finally, go to the Elevation view direction for whichever drawing you want to produce, Hide any other clearly extraneous objects, and then Export the drawing.
- Advanced option -- If your drawing is carefully organized so that all the objects relevant to each floor level can be easily turned on and off using the appropriate Phases, then you can export the whole set of floor plans in just one operation. Since objects are exported to DXF along with their Phases, just go to Plan view, then Export. In the drawing application you can activate each floor in turn to select and drag the linework for that floor plan to where you want it, efficiently producing an accurate compound base drawing for all the plans in one drawing.
Export the 3D objects to DXF format, with the File menu Export > DXF Drawing command.
Then bring the DXF drawing you have prepared into your drawing/drafting application, using the appropriate commands in that application.
1. Using PowerCADD, import the DXF drawing file using the File menu Open command, with the DXF file type setting.
2. An import options dialog box will appear. Be sure to choose the drawing scale you want with the pop-up menu at the bottom of the dialog box.
3. Save the new PowerCADD file, using a slightly different name in case you need to go back to the raw DXF version. You now have the imported DXF objects as scaled 2D entities in a new PowerCADD drawing.
4. Start the drawing clean-up process by giving the Select All menu command, and then changing all the imported linework to a very fine line width.
5. Next, before plunging into serious creative drafting, spend a little more time on the 2D drawing, cleaning up the raw imported linework by selecting and deleteing any obvious extraneous lines.
6. As you start into your serious drawing work, keep in mind that because all the edges of a 3D object are converted into the 2D drawing, there will often be directly superimposed duplicate lines. You may want to go through and delete the duplicates first, or you can leave them in and delete only the ones that happen to get in your way.
(Over the next several months, these multi-step procedures will probably be superceded by more elegant translations based on the "QuickDraw 3D Metafile" (3DMF) standard recently introduced by Apple Computer, Inc. This format will be supported in DesignWorkshop 2.0, and by most other Macintosh modeling programs.)

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http://www.dil.uoregon.edu/computing/tools/3d_to_2d_by_dxf.html - Posted 96.02.10 KMM, rev. 96.06.01