CAD Software ?

Darren Wright

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I'm looking for an easier way to break up a large Autocad or Turbocad file (2d) into sections and save as separate files. Say I've got a drawing that is 2' X 8', I want to break it into 4 separate 2' X 2' drawings. Anyone know of any software that will do this?

Reason is, I've got a cnc router that is only 2' X 3', and I want to be able to easily work on a larger project one section at a time. I would route the first drawing, move the work down on the table to the next section, route it, and so on.

Thanks,
 
Not being a Turbocad/Autocad expert, my first inclination would be to import the DXF into CorelDraw, use the PowerClip function to chunk it up, and export the pieces back to separate DXF files. Don't know how well that would work though: the CorelDraw DXF import/export can be a bit twitchy sometimes, resulting in extra nodes, doubled lines, stuff like that.

But I'm having a lot of trouble believing Auto/Turbo can't do that directly: seems like I remember people at work sending large Autocad drawings to small plotters in page-sized chunks when the big roll plotter wasn't available. I think it just involved defining a "virtual" page size that was bigger than the physical page size of the output device and some kind of "tiling" option in the print driver.
 
if you have autocad it's an easy task to break the drawing into four sections. I would bisect the drawing horizontally and vertically with clip lines then save 4 copies. Use the clip lines to erase a different 3/4 of each drawing to create individual panels covering 1/4 of the total.
 
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