# Import .dfx file to Tek Soft Cad Cam? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 8, 2005, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/import-dfx-file-to-tek-soft-cad-cam/334699 "2005-12-08T16:40:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Squirt\_One\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Squirt\_One\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squirt_One_Out)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/import-dfx-file-to-tek-soft-cad-cam/334699/1 "2005-12-08T16:40:42Z")
I’m trying to import .dfx drawing files into Tek Soft Cad Cam (1999 Edition) software and cannot figure out how to do it. No manual, no help in the help files. Ideas? Basically you scan a piece of a tool/equipment into a computer and get a .bmp file. You convert that file into a .dfx file. That file somehow needs to get imported into Tek Soft Cad Cam so that a machine can then carve out into a medium (metal, plastic, etc.) that item. Thanks in advance. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/import-dfx-file-to-tek-soft-cad-cam/334699/2 "2005-12-08T16:45:52Z")
I suspect you’re talking about .DXF files, not .DFX - if you’ve been mistyping this elsewhere, it may have been hampering your search. ---
**Author:** ![Squirt\_One\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Squirt\_One\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squirt_One_Out)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/import-dfx-file-to-tek-soft-cad-cam/334699/3 "2005-12-08T19:39:05Z")
My apologies. I should review posts before submitting them. .dxf not .dfx. Questino still stands though, anyone have any idea? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/import-dfx-file-to-tek-soft-cad-cam/334699/4 "2005-12-08T22:41:38Z")
Sorry about that, I just imagined that perhaps you’d found nothing if you had been searching using the incorrectly typed term. Anyway… A scanned image is a bitmap file (hence .bmp, although .bmp is by no means the only possible format for saving bitmaps) - this means that the image is stored as a grid of discrete pixels that will each have a colour value. Bitmap formats therefore don’t ‘know’ anything about the objects they are depicting. For this reason, they aren’t particularly suitable for applications that will try to realise the shapes in the image as anything other than flat printed forms (such as a photograph). .dxf is one of several different _vector_ graphics formats; this is a completely different way of storing the picture - it consists of shapes, lines and curves that are described not by the pixels they occupy, but by the co-ordinates of their vertices and the curve properties of their lines and surfaces. So vector image formats are a container for a collection of _shaped objects_ - the file ‘knows’ what shape are the objects it is depicting. This is why CAD programs use vector formats - they describe how to ‘make’ the objects in them. Enough about that; what you’re looking for is a conversion utility that will change bitmap images into vectors - like tracing a line drawing from a photo - this is often easier for a human than it is for a computer, particularly if the image to be traced doesn’t have sharp lines of colour change delineating the borders of the objects. Anyway, there are quite a number of different offerings that will claim to be able to do this; [here](http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/bitmaptovector/) looks like a good place to start, but it looks like [Autotrace](http://autotrace.sourceforge.net/) might be a one-stop, freeware solution for you. ---
**Author:** ![Squirt\_One\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Squirt\_One\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squirt_One_Out)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/import-dfx-file-to-tek-soft-cad-cam/334699/5 "2005-12-09T04:58:15Z")
Many thanks to you sir. I will definetly follow your links. Heh. 😉