how to make a spline to a polyline

[jafooli]

hi guys, im really new at autocad. Im using autocad lt 2004. My plotter does not recognise splines, and I would like to convert them to a polyline. can anyone tell me how to do this, been trying to do if for a few days now but to no good. All info appreciated

 

when I highlight the spline it will not give me a option to turn the spline into a pline

[MSasu]

Please check the FLATTEN command (hope is available in LT).

 

Regards,

Mircea

[jafooli]

FLATTEN is a unknown command is there another way? thanks for your help

[MSasu]

Found out that it is part of Express pack, so not available on AutoCAD LT. Sorry.

 

Regards,

Mircea

[nestly]

P e d i t ...

[jafooli]

when I use command pedit, and click on the spline it says " object selected is not a polyline"

 

is there anyother way?

[SEANT]

Save out as AutoCAD R12/LT2 DXF (*.dxf) then re-open.

[nestly]

OK, I see that spline editing didn't get improved until sometime after 2005....

[jafooli]

right ok so ive sussed it, thanks guys, save as r12 format, open again. copy item, paste item as block on new sheet, this allows me to make the lines into polylines, great, now ive got it sorted, just to find out that the lines on my dxf are to tight for the knife cutter to cut too, if its not one thing its another... Thanks for all your help

[nestly]

If you post the drawing, or better yet, wblock out the splines to a new drawing and post that, someone here can use PEDIT in a newer version of AutoCAD to convert them directly, you just have to indicate how much precision you need.

 

In the picture below, the top object is a Spline, then the spline converted to a pline with a "precision" of 10, then precision 1, then precision 99

 

[jafooli]

yep ive figured out how to convert it to a pline, I need a presision of 1 as we work to -+ 3mm. the thing is now the knife cutter sees each blue block as a start and finish so the machine starts and stops all the time, if only there was a way that the pline could show as a spline and not so many blue blocks so the cutter can complete a line without start stopping

[MSasu]

I suppose that by “blue blocks” you mean vertexes?

 

Regards,

Mircea

[jafooli]

yeah I guess so, sorry pretty new to the names of things, basically if I drew a straight line there would be a blue box at beggining of line, one in the middle and one at the end.

[MSasu]

Those are called grips.

 

Just curios, your machine will do a stop at the middle of the line, too?

 

Regards,

Mircea

[jafooli]

funny enough msasu no it does not, only end to end

[ReMark]

Why don't you just post a drawing with these splines in it and let someone here that uses the full version of AutoCAD convert them to lwpolylines via the FLATTEN command. Wouldn't that be the most direct approach?

[nestly]

jafooli, does you machine stop on all polylines, or one some of them? If it's only some, then might it be because there are too many (they are too closely spaced? What is the plotter/cutter model? Perhaps a solution can be found in the documentation?

[jafooli]

I would like to but to be honest bit worried about doing the above as its our company logo and not too sure how I stand in allowing outside party having the company logo. copyright etc etc

[nestly]

You don't have to post the whole drawing, just make a drawing containing some or all of the splines. Start the WBLOCK command, use the "Objects" option, and select the objects, and you can Write only those objects to an empty drawing.

[ReMark]

I would like to but to be honest bit worried about doing the above as its our company logo and not too sure how I stand in allowing outside party having the company logo. copyright etc etc

Yeah, you're right. One of us bad boys of CAD might want to steal it and start a rival company just to put your's out of business. That's why we hang around here all day. LoL This is a joke for those of you with no humor gene.

 

I seriously doubt anyone here covets your company's logo. But one can't be too careful now can one.

 

Do you have a friend who runs a full version of AutoCAD you could impose upon to do it for you? Buy him a beer afterwards.