Expert: J. B. Borge - 9/25/2006

Question
I'm teaching a high school course on Design Tech, i.e. AutoCAD, and another on Communication Tech, i.e. Photoshop.  I was thinking about the school's CNC Router, looking at G-Code, and whatnot, but I was wondering on the specifics of importing a CorelDraw file to AutoCAD and using that as a guide for the CNC Router.  Do you have any experience with this, or know the best place to get assistance?

Answer
Graham,

Since CorelDraw is vector based (like Illustrator & Autocad), you should be able to directly export a *.dxf file to the CNC. Any raster images (pictures/bitmaps) you have, needs to be converted to vector first. All of your drawings generated from CorelDraw using its native tools (line, arc, lineweight features) will work. And also drawings generated from Autocad orcourse. However, any raster images has to be traced using CorelDraw in order for the export to work. You don't really need Autocad at all unless you're opting for precision. Hope this helps!

-J. B. Borge