Interoperability · DXF & PDF import

Drop in a DXF. Get a solid and a STEP.

The laser-cut profile a vendor sent, the flat pattern from an old job, the bracket someone only ever drew in 2D: open the DXF in NativeCAD and it is a real part. Holes are true cylinders, arcs are true arcs, every outline is exact, and it saves as a STEP file any CAD system or shop can open. And a manufacturer's PDF drawing opens too, read as the drawing it is: every view, its exact geometry, every dimension, the scale of every view and the title block.

Open a DXF or PDF in the modeler Get the Claude plugin Download a sample DXF

Three ways in

In the browser

Open it in the modeler

Click Open and pick the .dxf. Give it a thickness and you get a flat part; leave it blank and you get a 2D sketch to extrude, pocket and build on. The drawing's own units are picked up for you, so an inch drawing comes in at the right size. Export STEP when you're done. Pick a vector .pdf drawing and it opens as a drawing: views, scale and title block, page by page.

Modeler open it now

With Claude

Ask for the part

With the NativeCAD plugin, Claude imports the DXF with cad_import, builds the solid and hands you the STEP. Each part is named from its drawing layer, and that name goes into the STEP file.

Say to ClaudeImport bracket.dxf as a 3 mm plate and save it as STEP.

Engineering drawings

Read it as a drawing

Point it at a drawing sheet, a DXF or a vector PDF, and NativeCAD reads the sheet: front, top, side, iso and section views, the title block, first or third angle, each view's scale and its dimensions. Sheets kept in paper-space layouts are read through their viewports, each at its own scale, and every view's curves can be written out for the next step.

Say to ClaudeRead the datasheet drawing.pdf as a drawing and tell me its views and scale.

One file, start to finish

The sample plate's cut-path DXF, the file NativeCAD writes for a laser vendor, goes back in at 6 mm and comes out as the plate it was cut from:

13DXF entities in

1watertight solid out

5holes, true cylinders

20faces

12,293.80mm³, the plate's volume

CUTpart name, from its layer

DXF nativecad-plate-cutpath.dxf 1.4 KB STEP nativecad-plate.step 75 KB

The same 20 faces and the same volume as the plate's own STEP. Open the DXF in the modeler with a 6 mm thickness, or hand it to Claude, and compare.

Manufacturer PDF drawings, read exactly

Most datasheet drawings are vector PDFs, not scans: the lines are exact and the dimensions are real text. NativeCAD reads them as a drawing, not a picture.

Outlines come back as exact lines, arcs and circles. A hole is a circle with its true diameter, not a polygon.
Every dimension is read as a value in millimetres: 60, Ø8, R4.75, 2X Ø2.5, 30±0.1, 45°.
The drawing scale is recovered from those dimensions, view by view: a 1.5:1 detail beside a 1:2 view both come back full size.
CAD layers are kept, and line styles are sorted into visible, hidden and centre lines.
Outlines that some exporters draw as thin filled strokes still read as edges.

Checked against drawings NativeCAD makes itself: every visible edge comes back within 0.001 mm on the sheet, the scale matches, and every dimension is recovered.

And on real parts: six NIST manufacturing drawings rebuilt into STEP and checked against NIST's own models. Every one is a match.

Open the .pdf in the modeler, or hand it to Claude, and you get the same drawing summary a DXF sheet gives: the views and where they sit, first or third angle, the scale of each view, its dimensions and the title block, with every view's curves on request. A drawing set is read a page at a time. A scanned PDF is turned away by name, because a scan has no exact geometry to read.

Say to ClaudeRead page 2 of bracket-drawings.pdf as a drawing and list its views and their scales.

Every option and every refusal code: PDF drawing in.

What it reads

	DXF	Vector PDF
Geometry	`LINE`, `ARC`, `CIRCLE`, `LWPOLYLINE` with bulges, `POLYLINE`, `ELLIPSE`, `SPLINE`; ellipses and splines stay exact curves. Doubled lines are merged and near-miss gaps closed, up to a tolerance you set	Lines, curves and rectangles; arcs and circles come back as arcs and circles
Structure	Blocks and `MINSERT` arrays, mirrored and scaled ones too; layers, with include and exclude lists	Optional-content layers, form XObjects, compressed object streams, any page of the file
Units and scale	The file's `$INSUNITS`, or your override; inch drawings arrive in millimetres	The units note on the sheet; the scale of every view
Annotation	Dimensions, text and title-block attributes, as data	Dimension values and every note on the sheet, embedded fonts included
Sheets	Model space, and paper-space layouts through their viewports	Any page: views, title block and border found, each view scaled on its own
Where	The modeler's Open, or `cad_import` from Claude: a part, a sketch or a drawing	The modeler's Open, or `cad_import` from Claude: read as a drawing. A scanned page is refused by name
Versions	ASCII DXF, R12 to 2018	PDF 1.x, including object and cross-reference streams