DXF Import and Layers - 5 in ACad results in 1 in LB?

I am attempting to import a DXF file which has 5 layers when I look in Autocad. I do a File–>Import and the DXF file comes into Lightburn as all one layer? What can I check for?

Thanks
Rich.

Apologies for this delayed response. :slight_smile: LightBurn uses RGB color matching to best place shapes on different layers during import. Are the source file layers shades of gray or unusual colors by chance?

Are all the shapes for the original file intact, meaning, while not on different layers, are all your shapes there, showing in LightBurn? If you are willing, you can share this file for our review. Append .txt to the file [your_file.dxf.txt] and post here or send to support@lightburnsoftware.com, include a link to this post for context, please.

Thank you for the email. Once I realized that “color = layer” in Lightburn and assigned colors to all the layers in AutoCAD it imported no problem. I managed to accomplish my goal but I’m wondering if there is a “sensible” or “correct” way of doing it? I was a bit “by gosh and by golly” when selecting colors. :slight_smile:

Ruida controllers have a hardware limit of 32 layers, and we do color mapping to closest - If you use 10 unique colors, they get mapped to the 10 closest unique layers. Here is the color table used in LightBurn.

I feel the same way, and I have been discussing it here:

Basically, your layers in DXF are ignored, and new layers based on colours are created. Ironically these new layers have names too: C00, C01, etc.

I think that is absolutely the wrong way to do it, and I am suggesting instead that elements should be grouped into layers by name, and possibly that operations should be defined by colour. (And therefore several layers could have the same colour if the same laser operation is being performed).

However, colour is not (and shouldn’t be) important, it’s just a convenience. The laser operation is just a property of the layer. Assigning meaning to the colour, or rather, insisting that the colour is the way to distinguish between layers when layers already have names is, in my opinion, wrong.