Converting Coordinates to DXF or SVG 2D Polylines

Guitarmakers, violin makers and other luthiers often use software to generate two dimensional curves, represented as a series of points. This is done in a number of applications, including the design of body outlines and arching profiles. It would be convenient to be able to easily convert these point series into polylines for use in CAD or other drawing programs. In fact, if you use AutoCAD, this can be accomplished using command line commands. But folks using other drawing software are generally out of luck, and face the task of having to transcribe the coordinates of these points into their drawings by hand. This page features a Javascript calculator which will take a series of (x,y) coordinates from a spreadsheet or any other source and generate a .dxf (r10) file or an .svg file containing a 2D polyline containing the point series. This can be imported into any CAD drawing and can be used with most other drawing software as well.

Operation of the Calculator

The calculator takes an array of two dimensional coordinates as input. The array should contain the coordinates in order, one point per line. Each line contains the (x) coordinate, some whitespace and/or the comma character, and then the (y) coordinate. Spreadsheet and other software can be used to generate this set as two columns (x,y) of numeric values. Depending on the tool you are using to generate the point coordinates, you can either generate a .csv (comma separated values) file of the points, or simply select and copy that portion of the spreadsheet onto the clipboard.

Once the array of coordinates is on the clipboard, you can paste it into the input text box of the calculator. If all looks good, select the output file format you want (.dxf or .svg) and click on the Calculate button.

If the Status box says "complete" then the conversion was successful and a download dialog will pop up so you can open or save the converted file to disk.