Convert DXF to SVG
A machining drawing, opened in a program that draws rather than machines. Both formats are flat outlines, so the shapes survive exactly; what changes is that an SVG can be edited in Inkscape, Illustrator or Figma, and a DXF cannot.
Drag a 3D file here, or.
This page is set up for DXF files. Other formats we can read work here too.
The file is read on your own computer. It is never uploaded.
Your file is read by your own browser and never sent to a server. There is no upload, no account and no copy of your model anywhere but on your computer.
What comes across
Every closed outline in the drawing, at its true size. Arcs stay curved, rounded polyline corners stay rounded, and splines are evaluated properly rather than approximated by their control points.
Blocks are expanded where they sit, with their rotation and scale, so a drawing whose twenty holes are one block placed twenty times comes across with twenty holes rather than none.
The size is written into the SVG twice — as a viewBox and as a width and height with a real unit on them — so Inkscape and Illustrator both open the drawing at the size it was drawn rather than at some multiple of it.
Why the drawing has to be closed
This converter works by finding the areas in the drawing, which means it needs loops rather than loose segments. It joins lines and arcs that meet end to end into loops on its own, and reports how many it had to rebuild, but a shape with a genuine gap in it cannot be closed by guessing.
The message under the preview says how many outlines were left out for that reason. In LibreCAD or QCAD that is fixed with Modify → Trim; in AutoCAD, PEDIT with the Join option.
What is left behind
Text, dimensions, leaders and hatching are left out. None of them is an outline: a dimension describes the part, a hatch is a fill pattern inside a boundary, and a text entity is a request to draw letters in a font that is not in the file.
Layers and colours are not carried across either. The SVG is written as plain black paths with no fill, which is what a cutting machine wants and what is easiest to restyle in a drawing program.
What survives, and what does not
Kept in the SVG file
- Every closed outline, at the drawing’s true size
- Arcs, bulged polyline corners and splines, as smooth curves
- Blocks, expanded where they were placed
- A real-world size in the SVG header, so it opens at the right scale
Lost on the way
- Text, dimensions, leaders and hatching
- Layers, colours and line types
- Outlines whose ends do not meet, which are counted and reported
How to convert DXF to SVG
Drop the .dxf file in
Everything a DXF needs is inside it, so there is nothing to include alongside.
Read the message under the preview
It says which unit the drawing declared, how many outlines were rebuilt from loose segments, and what was left out.
Check the width and depth
If the drawing was in inches and did not say so, this is where you will see it. The scale box corrects it.
Download the SVG
It opens at its real size in Inkscape and Illustrator, with every outline as a plain unfilled path ready to restyle.
DXF and SVG compared
| Property | DXF.dxf | SVG.svg |
|---|---|---|
| File contents | Plain text in numbered group codes, with a binary variant nobody uses. | XML. A text description of shapes, readable and editable by hand. |
| Geometry | Lines, arcs, circles, polylines and splines, in 2D and limited 3D. | Flat paths: lines, arcs, and cubic and quadratic Bézier curves. |
| Units | Recorded in a header variable, as one of twenty-odd unit codes. | Real units are allowed — mm, cm, in — but most files use bare user units. |
| Colour and texture | A colour number per entity, and colour by layer. | Fills, strokes, gradients and patterns, none of which describe a solid. |
| Separate objects | Named layers, plus blocks for repeated geometry. | Groups and layers, with ids and names on both. |
| Published by | Autodesk, 1982, as the published counterpart to the closed DWG. | The W3C, 1999. Version 1.1 is what tools write; SVG 2 is still arriving. |
| Written by | AutoCAD, LibreCAD, QCAD, Fusion 360 and every laser cutter’s software. | Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity Designer, Figma and every drawing program. |
Questions
- Will Inkscape open it at the right size?
- Yes. The size is written both as a viewBox and as a width and height with a real unit, which Inkscape and Illustrator read together. That pair is what stops a drawing arriving 3.78 times too large.
- Where did my dimensions and text go?
- They are left out on purpose. Neither is an outline, and a font cannot travel in a DXF. Explode the text to lines in your CAD program first if you need the lettering.
- Can I edit the curves afterwards?
- You can edit the paths, but the curves arrive as fine straight segments rather than as Bézier curves, because that is how the shape is measured. For smooth editable curves, redraw them in your vector program.