You bought a cut file. It came as an SVG. Your CAM software wants a DXF. This is the single most common wall a new plasma owner hits, and it stops people cold on their first weekend with a table.

The conversion itself takes about thirty seconds in Inkscape, which is free. The part nobody tells you is what silently breaks during the conversion, and how to catch it before you have burned a sheet of steel.


SVG is a web format. It was built for browsers, it thinks in pixels and CSS, and it happily carries things a plasma table has no idea what to do with — strokes with width, fills, gradients, text that is still text, clipping masks, groups inside groups.

DXF is an AutoCAD format from the 1980s. It thinks in real-world units and it only really understands geometry: lines, arcs, polylines, circles. That is exactly what a plasma table needs, because the machine is going to trace those paths with a torch.

So the conversion is not a translation between two equal things. It is a narrowing. You are throwing away everything the machine cannot use and keeping the outlines. Most conversion problems come from a file that has something in it that cannot survive that narrowing.

1. Open the SVG. File → Open, pick your file. Do not import it into an existing document, just open it directly.

2. Select everything. Edit → Select All.

3. Ungroup, repeatedly. Object → Ungroup, and do it three or four times. Cut files often arrive nested several groups deep. Ungrouping does not damage anything and it prevents a whole category of weirdness later.

4. Turn text into paths. If the design has any live text in it — a name, a monogram letter, a word — select it and use Path → Object to Path. Text that is still text will either vanish in the DXF or come out in whatever font the receiving machine happens to have, which is never the right one.

5. Turn strokes into shapes. This is the step people skip. Select all, then Path → Stroke to Path. A stroke in SVG is a line with a width — a visual property, not geometry. DXF has no concept of that. If you skip this, a design drawn with strokes converts to a single hairline down the middle of every line, and your torch cuts a scribble instead of a shape.

6. Save as DXF. File → Save As, and in the file type dropdown choose Desktop Cutting Plotter (AutoCAD DXF R14). Give it a name, save it.

That is the whole conversion.

Everything comes out the wrong size. This is the most common one. DXF R14 out of Inkscape does not always carry your units across cleanly, and a 24-inch sign arrives in your CAM software as 24 millimetres, or 240 inches. Do not fight it in Inkscape. Open the DXF in your CAM software, measure a known dimension, and scale the whole thing once to the size you actually want. Every CAM package can do this and it takes five seconds.

The design is a wireframe instead of a shape. Red outlines, no solid areas, the torch would trace both sides of every line. That is the stroke problem from step 5. Go back, undo the save, run Stroke to Path, save again.

Interior pieces fall out. The middle of an O, the inside of an A, the island in the middle of a monogram. If the design was built properly those pieces are bridged — connected to the surrounding metal by small tabs. If it was not, they are separate closed shapes and they will drop through the slats when the cut finishes. Look at the file before you cut and ask yourself which pieces are attached to something.

Open the DXF in your CAM software and look for three things.

Overall size. Measure something you know the dimension of. Fix the scale now, not after the cut.

Duplicate paths. A doubled path makes the torch cut the same line twice, which burns the edge and wastes consumables. Most CAM software will flag overlapping geometry if you ask it to.

Open paths. Every shape the torch cuts needs to be closed. An open path means the torch runs off the end of a line instead of coming back around, and you get a nick in the part.

Thirty seconds of looking saves a sheet.

You can skip the whole thing by buying files that come with the DXF already made. Every cut file in the Tin Man Metal Works store ships as SVG and DXF both, drawn for plasma, with no backer layers and no cleanup work before you cut. The bridging is already done and the sizes are sane.

If you want to try that before spending anything, the free file library has cut-ready SVG and DXF in every category — seasonal designs, monograms, garage art.

[Get the free CNC plasma cut files](https://www.tinmanmetalworks.com/blog/free-cnc-plasma-cut-files)

I walk through the whole thing on the table in this video, including what a bad conversion looks like so you can recognise it:


[Watch: Convert SVG to DXF quickly and easily with Inkscape](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WersVG43Bog)

If you are just getting started with Inkscape, that video is part of a full free course covering the program from the download through to drawing your own files from scratch, aimed specifically at plasma table owners rather than graphic designers.

Open the SVG. Ungroup a few times. Object to Path on any text. Stroke to Path on everything. Save as Desktop Cutting Plotter DXF R14. Then open it in your CAM software and check the size, check for doubles, check the paths are closed.

Do that and the conversion stops being a mystery and becomes something you do without thinking about it.