SVG to DXF

From design software to the workshop

This is the bridge between two worlds that think differently. Design tools — Inkscape, Illustrator, Figma, Affinity — think in artwork: fills, gradients, layers, effects. CAD and CAM software thinks in geometry: contours with coordinates that a machine can follow. When a logo, an ornament or a sign design needs to become a laser cut, a plasma part or a router job, the artwork has to be reduced to its geometry — and that is precisely what this converter does. It carries the shapes across and leaves the styling behind, which sounds like a loss until you remember that a cutting table cannot cut a gradient anyway.

What maps to what

The mapping is straightforward for most content: an SVG line becomes a DXF LINE, a circle becomes a CIRCLE, rectangles and polygons become closed polylines, and path curves are flattened into short straight segments — an outline that cuts perfectly well, though it is not a mathematically smooth arc if your CAM software prefers those. One quiet exception is worth knowing before you export: a true ellipse element — one with unequal radii — does not make it into the DXF. The fix is the same trick designers already know: convert ellipses to paths in your editor first, and they come through as segmented outlines like any other curve. Perfect circles are unaffected and stay real circles.

If shapes land in the wrong place, it is a transform

The classic symptom: the DXF opens fine, but one part of the design sits at the wrong position, size or angle compared to your original. That is almost always a group carrying its own rotate, scale or move transform, which this converter reads through but does not apply. The cure happens in your editor before export: ungroup everything until no groups remain, or use your editor's option to apply or flatten transforms, then save as a plain SVG rather than a compressed or tool-specific variant. Thirty seconds of flattening at the source is worth more than any amount of repositioning afterwards.

Pixels in, real millimetres later

An SVG usually measures in pixels — most editors assume 96 to the inch — and a DXF is unit-less until the receiving program decides otherwise. So treat the imported size as provisional: measure one feature you know the real size of, scale the whole drawing to match in your CAD software, and only then start laying out work. Two of our free tools slot naturally into what comes next: if the flattened curves have left you with a heavy file full of tiny segments, the DXF node optimizer (/dxf-optimizer) thins them down without visibly changing the shape — and if you are cutting many copies of the part from one sheet, the DXF nesting tool (/dxf-nesting) packs them for you.

What this reads — an honest answer

This reads SVG's own shape elements directly — no external library. It understands lines, circles, rectangles, polylines, polygons and paths (including curves, which are converted into short straight segments — an outline, not a perfectly smooth curve). Shapes inside a group with its own transform (rotate/scale/move) aren't repositioned — for a clean result, flatten transforms in your vector editor first (most tools call this "flatten" or "apply transform").