Both formats work. Send whichever your software exports cleanly, at 1:1. What follows is the actual list of entities and elements our measurer reads, so you can check your own file before you send it — and the four things that most often break one.
In a DXF we read
LINECIRCLEARCLWPOLYLINEPOLYLINEELLIPSESPLINE
Everything else in the file is ignored, however good it looks on screen. Blocks, hatches, dimensions, text and layers are not cut lines.
In an SVG we read
pathrectcircleellipselinepolygonpolyline
Transforms are honoured — matrix, translate, scale, rotate, skewX and skewY, including ones applied to a parent group. So rotating or scaling a shape in Illustrator before you export does not move it off the drawing; the transform is applied and the geometry is measured where it actually lands. You do not need to flatten your artboards.
What is ignored: strokes, fills, filters, masks, clip paths and text. Only the geometry of the elements above becomes a cut line. A stroke width means nothing to a laser — the path is the cut.
Four things that break a file
1. A DWG
A DWG is a different format from a DXF and we cannot read it. The measurer says so in these words: “No DXF entities found — is this a DXF (not DWG)? Export DWG to DXF first.” Export to DXF and send that; it takes ten seconds and nothing is lost.
2. A raster image where a vector should be
A PNG or a JPG has no cut lines. Pixels are not geometry. Upload one and you get: “A raster image has no vector cut lines. Upload SVG/DXF, or enter the finished size.” You can still order — enter the finished size and we will work from the image. A clear photograph is a legitimate thing to send: we trace it, and you approve the proof before anything is cut.
3. An <image> hidden inside an SVG
This one is nastier, because the file is an SVG, opens as an SVG and looks right on screen. If the artwork was traced and left as a raster, the SVG contains an <image> element and no vector outlines at all. We flag that twice: “No vector outlines found — the SVG may contain only a raster <image>.” and “SVG contains a raster <image>; convert it to paths for an exact cut.”
The fix is in whatever you drew it in. In Illustrator, Image Trace then Expand. In Inkscape, Path → Trace Bitmap, then Path → Object to Path. Either way, you want paths in the file, not an embedded picture.
4. Open outlines where you meant a hole
A hole is counted from a closed outline. An open path is still cut along its length — it just is not counted as a hole. The two formats differ slightly, and the difference catches people out:
- DXF: every
CIRCLEcounts as a hole. Every closedLWPOLYLINEorPOLYLINEcounts too, at any size. - SVG: every
<circle>counts, at any size. A closedpathorpolygoncounts only if its bounding box is 6 mm or less across.
So a 40 mm hole drawn as a circle counts in both formats, but the same hole drawn as a closed square counts in a DXF and not in an SVG. Draw your holes as circles in both and they behave identically.
Holes only carry a separate charge if you tick stitch holes in the builder, at $0.02 each. Untick it and they are still cut — they just add their cut length like any other outline. Twelve 1.5 mm holes add 113.1 mm of cut length.
Curves are measured as straight segments
We price cut length, so how a curve is measured matters. Bézier curves are flattened into straight segments before they are measured — 24 segments for a cubic, 20 for a quadratic — and SVG arcs are split at roughly 7.5° each. A DXF ARC is measured from its radius and sweep angle directly, so that one is exact.
A DXF SPLINE is read as a polyline through its stored points rather than as a true spline. If your drawing is mostly splines, the measured length will differ slightly from what your CAD package reports. Flattening a curve into chords always shortens it a little, so where there is any difference at all, it is in your favour, not ours.
The checklist
- 1:1 — the size on screen is the size of the finished part
- units on the drawing, or
$INSUNITSset inside a DXF - closed outlines for anything you want cut as a shape
- holes drawn as circles
- no fills, guides, dimensions or text left in the cut layer
- export DXF or SVG — not DWG, not PNG
- name the file after the part:
wallet-v3.dxfbeatsfinal-final2.dxf
The full specifications — minimum feature size, minimum hole diameter, cut tolerance and engraving depth — are on the how it works page. If a file does not measure the way you expect, send it over and we will tell you which rule fired and what it measured, before you commit to anything.