Convert an image to a DXF your CAD program will open
A DXF is a handoff, not a picture. Nobody opens one to admire it — you open it because the next machine in the chain needs geometry it can follow, and DXF is the oldest thing every CAD and CAM program still agrees on. That is what this converter makes from an ordinary raster image: a drawing written as DXF R2010 (AC1024), which AutoCAD 2010 and later, Fusion 360, LightBurn, FreeCAD and Inkscape all read without a plugin in between.
The interesting part therefore happens after the download, in the import dialog, where the first question is usually what one unit in the file stands for. Our exporter answers that one inside the file: coordinates are written at millimetre scale and the header declares it, $INSUNITS = 4, so an importer that reads the variable lands the drawing at the size you meant without being told. Leave the millimetre fields empty and the scale falls out of the pixel grid at 96 px = 25.4 mm; fill them in and the geometry is built to those dimensions.
Colour becomes structure, the other thing to know before converting. Every distinct colour the tracer finds turns into its own layer, named FILL_RRGGBB after the colour it came from — the handle you need when part of the drawing should be cut and part engraved. The geometry is contour only: LWPOLYLINE for straight sections, degree-3 SPLINE curves elsewhere, no HATCH anywhere, so nothing in the file is a solid.
Drop an image here
or click to choose one
How it works
- Add one PNG, JPEG or WEBP image — one file per conversion.
- Tick DXF as the output format and set the colour count to the number of layers you want back.
- Type the finished width and height into the millimetre fields so the drawing is built at real size.
- Run it, check the preview, then sign in with Google to download the DXF.
- Import it — the header already names millimetres — and assign your cut and engrave operations per layer.
Who this is for
This is the page for the case where the source format barely matters. Someone sends a logo as a PNG, a customer photographs a gasket and emails a JPEG, a marketplace hands you a WEBP — the machine at the other end wants a DXF either way, and the tracer works on decoded pixels rather than on the container, so the geometry comes out the same.
What deserves saying plainly is what the result is not. These outlines are measured off a raster image by a geometric tracer — colour segmentation, an explicit anti-aliasing model, then curve fitting — so they are faithful contours of what the pixels show, not parametric CAD data. There are no dimensions, no constraints, no design history in the file. If the part has to fit something, import it, measure it against your own reference and adjust.
Settings we suggest
Colours decides how much structure comes back, because the colour count is also the layer count. Two colours give one silhouette contour on a single layer, which is all a straight cut-out needs. Four to six is the useful range when the drawing carries more than one operation — an outline to cut, an interior mark to engrave. The slider reaches 64, but every extra colour is one more layer somebody has to assign later.
Shape stacking: Cut-outs is the right choice for machining. Holes come out as their own closed loops inside the parent contour, the way a cutter expects them; Stacked writes overlapping shapes that share edges, and a toolpath generator will cut a shared edge twice.
Fill in both millimetre fields. What you type there is applied to the DXF and is the only way to pin physical dimensions, because images above 1.5 megapixels are downscaled before tracing — the pixel dimensions of the result are the downscaled ones. Uploads go up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels.
Two controls do not touch this output: draw style never reaches the DXF writer, and grouping only rearranges SVG. One layer per colour happens anyway.
Questions
Which programs will open the DXF?
It is written as DXF R2010, the AC1024 header, which AutoCAD 2010 and later reads natively. Fusion 360 takes it as a sketch import, LightBurn opens it for laser work, FreeCAD imports it through the Draft workbench, and Inkscape reads it too.
The import dialog is asking me for units. What do I choose?
Millimetres — and most software works that out for itself. Coordinates are written at millimetre scale and the header states it, $INSUNITS = 4, so an importer that honours the variable opens the drawing at true size first time. A few older CAM front ends ignore the header and apply their own default, often inches; if the part arrives roughly twenty-five times off, that is the setting to override.
Why are the shapes in my DXF not filled?
Because the exporter writes boundaries and nothing else: LWPOLYLINE for straight runs, degree-3 SPLINE for curves. It never writes a HATCH and embeds no bitmap, so every shape is an outline rather than a solid — which is what a cutter, router or plasma table wants. The loops are closed, so your own program can turn one into a region in a single step.
How do I keep cut lines and engraving apart?
Use colour. Give the source image one colour for everything to be cut and another for everything to be engraved, then convert with a matching colour count. Each colour arrives as its own layer named FILL_RRGGBB, so you assign an operation to the layer instead of picking contours by hand. Grouping in the panel only affects SVG; the layers happen regardless.
What can I feed it, and how large?
One image per conversion, as PNG, JPEG or WEBP, up to 25 MB and 40 megapixels. Logos and stickers typically convert in 3–12 seconds in our local measurements; fine-line or noisy images take longer. If a conversion does not finish within 60 seconds it stops and suggests fewer colours or a smaller image.
Is it free, and what happens to my image afterwards?
It is free and nothing carries a watermark. Run a conversion and look at the preview; the download button then asks for a free Google sign-in, which is what releases the DXF file. Before you sign in you get 10 conversions per hour; signed in it is 60 per hour and 300 per day. Download links expire after 1 hour, and uploaded images and generated files are removed by an automatic 1-day deletion rule.