Convert DXF to STL
A DXF becomes an STL by giving your closed outlines a thickness. You set the width and the thickness in millimetres, the outlines are extruded, and inner loops become holes rather than islands.
Turn an SVG outline or PNG silhouette into a solid relief. Your file stays in your browser.
What this keeps and what it drops
Kept
- Closed outlines, with inner loops cut out as holes
- The proportions of the drawing, scaled to the width you set
- Arcs and circles, as line segments too fine to see
Dropped
- The unit the DXF declares; you set the size in millimetres here
- Layers, which a solid cannot carry
- Layers that are switched off, and open outlines that cut nothing
- Text, dimensions and hatches, which are refused rather than ignored
You set the width and the thickness, so there is no single result to measure. What is fixed is what the tool refuses, and it refuses rather than dropping quietly.
What actually happens
A DXF is flat. It has no thickness, so nothing in the file answers the question an STL has to answer: how deep is this. You answer it. Set the artwork width and the relief thickness in millimetres, and the tool sweeps your outlines through that thickness to make a solid.
That is why this page claims no proven conversion the way DXF to SVG does. There is no single correct result to have measured. What is fixed is which drawings the tool accepts, and it refuses the rest rather than making something up.
Your outlines have to close
The tool joins your lines and arcs end to end into loops. Every loop has to close. A gap of a hundred-thousandth of the drawing is treated as closed, which is a thousandth of a millimetre on a 100 mm part, and anything wider is an open end.
If an end is left dangling, you get a refusal naming the problem instead of a solid with a missing wall. The same is true where three or more ends meet at one point: which way the outline continues is a guess there, so the tool stops.
Loops inside loops become holes. A plate with four bolt holes gives you a plate with four bolt holes, not four small discs sitting on top of it.
What the drawing's own size does not do
Nothing. The drawing is scaled so its width matches the number you type, whatever the DXF says its units are. If you want the part at its drawn size, open it in the DXF workspace first, read the measured width there, and type that number here.
Layers that are switched off are left out. So are arcs, which become line segments fine enough that you will not find the joins at any size this tool prints.
Limits
DXF files are limited to 10 MiB and must be text rather than binary. A drawing carrying text, dimensions, hatches or other entities this site does not read is refused rather than extruded without them. Artwork width is 1 to 1,000 mm, relief thickness 0.1 to 100 mm, and the result must come out closed and under 200,000 triangles.