The difference is that if you open it then it will be scaled to fit the default page size and scaling to a specific scale (ie 1:50, 1:100) will be more difficult. Now, fire up Inkscape and test it by IMPORTING a dxf file. Save the file and give it executable permissions (ie right-click->Properties->Permissions->”allow executing file as a program” )Īs sudo copy all the files from the inkscape-extension folder to /usr/share/inkscape/extensions NET extensionĮdit the file called kabeja inside the inkscape-extension folder and append “$2” at the end of the 3rd line like this: java -jar $KABEJA_HOME/kabeja-dxf2svg.jar '$1' '$2' Note: download the binary, this howto uses the “pure” java version not the. With a little bit of tweaking you can get it to work properly. The problem with kabeja is that the inkscape extension package they have doesn’t work out-of-the-box with inkscape 0.46. The alternative method for importing dxf files in inkscape is called kabeja and it’s another sourceforge project that uses java to convert from dxf to svg. Also it doesn’t retain colors in the result svg. The cons of this method is that it doesn’t support lots of entities from dxf like for example hatch or text. The pros of this method is that it’s simple and that it automatically translates dxf layers to svg layers and imports the drawing in it’s real dimensions so scaling is easy. The only way to get the dxf2svg executable is by compiling through the cvs sources and placing the resulting dxf2svg program in your PATH (ie /usr/bin/dxf2svg). At the inkscape wiki there is a link to a sourceforge projet but the zip file there is corrupted and of no good use. There seems to be an extension included with inkscape for importing dxf files, but it depends on a dxf2svg executable which is nowhere to be found. There are 2 methods of importing dxf files into inkscape. The default installation of inkscape is able to save to dxf but can’t open dxf files. In the architectural design workflow it’s nice to use such programs for drawings presentations etc. The latest version as of this writing is 0.46. Inkscape is a really nice open-source vector graphics program.

Inkscape dxf export