G code files - from milling to laser cutting.

I'm used to writing out G code for my 3 axis m/c working directly from paper sketches plus school level trigonometry for 2.5D patterns.

I'm now planning to get my ideas cut out by laser, and the owner can use .dxf, or .dwg.
He's running Alphacam, and mentions using .las files, but I can't find any likely info on that extension.

While I'm a competent user of of coreldraw on a windows m/c, it's going to be pretty tedious having to start from scratch in a none too brilliant installation of corel under wine, then going from .cdw(?) to .dxf, then emailing the result.

Is there a method of converting .ngc to dxf that might work in Ubuntu ?

I've seen fairly negative comments about gcode2dxf software, but that might have been improved by now.

John

A simple cad program is the normal way to do this kind of work. Are you wanting to retain your current workflow of working from paper, or is there some other reason you don't want to use a cad program?

I use QCad for a long time. It is well worth the money.

I even made a software that reads the QCad files (arcs, lines and circles) and outputs the desired structured GCode, mainly to my plasma cutter.

The professional version is not free. I use the professional version mostly to also support the development. I make money with it, so it is fair to pay back to those that develop the software. I tested the software for maybe 1 year, then as it suited my needs I decided to bought it.

I do not quite understand your question: what did you write your software in

I made in c# for windows platform. I needed a fast way to generate the code as I wanted, so I tested a few available programs that at the end I always needed to "clean" the output file. As I often program a bit, I made it to suit my objective.

Well thank you all for taking the time to contribute to my original posting, but somehow the actual question has disapeared into a discussion of a cad program.

I did include the specific question " Is there a method of converting .ngc to dxf that might work in Ubuntu ?"

If the answer is that there is no method of doing this, that alone would save me a lot of time looking, and I'll go back to using corelDraw on a windows m/c to generate my .dxf files.

John

There are free G-code to DXF conversion programs that can be downloaded. (don't know if there are any for Linux) Google is your friend.