A simple guide on turning CAD drawings into G-Code using freeware utilities.


This document is meant for beginners to the CNC world. You do not need to be familiar with G-code to use this document, however you will need basic windows navigation knowledge and an understanding of CAD systems. Sherline Products offers this guide purely as a convenience and does not offer any kind of support from problems incurred from following this document.

Having said that, lets get started...

So, you have your CAD drawing. For instructional purposes, I am using this file I wrote with Vector 32. If you have a Sherline mill or lathe you should of received a free demo copy of this CAD software.



Once you have finished drawing your CAD part, you will need to save it. In this example I saved it as a DXF file (sherlineprod.DXF). Once you have your DXF file, you can then open up Ace Converter. Ace converter should convert this DXF file to G-Code. However, depending on your specific part, the way you wrote your part, and the specific CAD program you used, you may get varying results with Ace Converter. You must remember this is FREE software, you cannot expect it to perform like the multi thousand dollar CAD / CAM systems.



Once you have Ace Converter open, you will want to load in your DXF file. To do so, click on the button labeled OPEN (seen in the picture above). Once you have the file open, you will then be able to click on the CONVERT button, it will then ask you to several options. You will want to vary these options depending on your exact needs. It will then ask you the name you wish to save the G-code file as. As a person of convention, I used the same name as the DXF file I created and saved the G-code file as sherlineprod.txt. Now you have successfully converted a DXF file to G-code.

I always like to test my G-code before actually cutting something. You can do this within EMC itself. Or, you can do it in Windows with a program like Codeshark. In Codeshark, you can open up a G-Code text file then view in a backplot what it will look like when cut out



Now that we can see that we have successfully converted the DXF file to G-code, you can run it without worry. This may not be a complete solution for many, but it is a whole lot more cost effective than buying many hundreds of dollars worth of software!

Please direct comments to mike@sherline.com