Re: Creating SVG: using MetaFun, exporting proper units, conversion to DXF

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

On 6/29/2016 12:31 PM, Mojca Miklavec wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I want to play with CNC and don't yet have any experience with CAD
> software (nor the licence for the expensive ones) other than perhaps
> some Blender, so I decided to try to use the super ugly route with
>     metapost -> svg -> dxf -> g-code
> for the first time.
>
> I have a few questions.
>
> (1) I love Hans' shortcuts in metafun, but I seem to remember that things like
>     input metafun;
> or perhaps
>     input mp-tool;
> used to work, so that I don't have to remember to use
>     mpost -mem=metafun my-drawings.mp
> when compiling the graphics.
>
> Did the method with "input" ever work (or is it supposed to work)? Now
> I'm getting a bunch of weird errors.
> I would love to specify everything in the source file and then just
> call mpost. If that doesn't work, that's fine, I can still add
> "-mem=metafun", but ...

input metafun.mpiv ;

> (2) I guess that using "raw metapost" is the only sane way to generate
> SVG. If I use metapost inside ConTeXt that's probably not going to
> work, right?
>
> (3) Is there any way to convince the SVG output mode to generate something like
>     <svg ... width="100.0mm" height="100.0mm" ... >
> rather than
>     <svg ... width="283.46456692913387" height="283.46456692913387" ... >
> because the program I use to convert SVG to DXF has troubles
> interpreting "points" properly. I read somewhere that they assume 90
> points per inch because that's Inkskape's default.

why not just

\startMPpage
   whatever you want
\stopMPpage

and then use mudraw (mutools) to go from pdf to svg (that's what i do 
when i need svg)

> (4) Does anyone have a better proposal for conversion into DXF (or
> G-code)? I'm currently playing with FreeCAD and I've seen some
> tutorials showing that AutoCAD can open PDF directly, but I don't want
> to buy AudoCAD just for the sake of converting files.
>
> (Not to mention that FreeCAD's SVG importer crashes when reading
> output from MetaPost unless I manually remove parts of the SVG, but
> that's an unrelated problem that I'm somehow able to overcome.)
>
> Thank you,
>     Mojca
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                                           Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
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If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
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