Laser Cutting Computer Question?

Lasers
1

I don’t own a laser cutter myself so I use a web bassed service I’ve always been happy with. I create my designs in Sketchup in their web based app. I prefer their downloadable 2017 version but it won’t run on my new laptop. After I create the design then I need to export the 2D designs to a file format the service accepts.

You can export from Sketchup’s web app to dxf but when I did that there where problems. When you upload the dxf the service shows you a preview of the cut. The preview showed that it was laser cutting the file in the visual orientation of the object on my screen instead of the actual design. So then I tried exporting it as an obj to upload into Tinkercad. Then I could resave it as a dxf or svg to see if that fixes the problem. But when I import the dxf into Tinkercad nothing comes in.

Am I exporting to DXF incorrectly from Sketchup. Or am I missing something on the OBJ export upload step? Is there a way to properly export from Sketchup once so it cuts correctly?

Thanks in Advance for any help.

2

Update I reset my old laptop to factory and reinstalled Skup 2017. I opened an older incorrect version of my design. I can’t get the web app version to open even with the open newer version extension installed. It just crashes the program.
I then found the camera button which I’ve never really used. I set it to parallel projection instead of perspective to see what happened. It seemed to fix my problem. So this morning I tried that fix in the web app with the correct version of my design. It didn’t work. The preview of my laser cut shows that it’s cutting a trapazoid for the outer perimeter and not a rectangle :neutral_face:

3

Second update. I solved it. You have to set the camera to parallel perspective. Then you have to square up the camera to be perpendicular to the design you want to laser cut. Then you just export to .dxf and you’re good.