DXF Export

The DXF and DWG format is very important for municipalities and provinces for the exchange of geometric data with architects and urban plannners. Some communities and utility companies in Switzerland therefore initiated a project to introduce a powerful and easy to use DXF export function directly in QGIS. The primary goal is being able to export utility and cadastral data.

The export function can be reached in the menu "Project" --> "DXF Export".

The goals reached so far are:

• Choice of Groups and layers to be exported
• Export of all data or current map extent
• Take-over of layer names either from the QGIS layer names or from a layer attribute (e.g. for the export of layer names corresponding with the Swiss SIA Geo405 standard)
• Different symbology export options:
  • No symbology: just one single geometry per feature, default symbology (mostly black)
  • Feature symbology: one single geometry per feature, only first symbol level (no complete reproduction of original symbology)
  • Symbol layer symbology: depending on the symbology, the same geometry is exported several times on top of each other, for each symbol level defined. Better suited for more complete reproduction of complex symbology
  • Definition of the symbology scale: note this does not scale the data but defines the scale value taken into account for calculating length units and the usage of filters based on map scale
• Definition of the text encoding of the resulting DXF file. Default is CP1252 (relevant for special characters, such as german Umlauts of french accents)
• Support for "visibilty presets": these are bookmarks on layer visbiltiy and style combinations. As an example you can set a bookmark on all utility layers, without the cadastral data.
• Support of export of labels, including many font/text properties and multiline text
• Automatic conversions of simple symbol shapes and SVG symbols to DXF blocks
• Support of simple fills (only simple color fills)
• Support of transparency for fills
• Support of mixed units (mm and map units)
• Support of line offsets

Explicitly not supported are:

• raster layers
• complex fill types, such as:
  • point pattern fills
  • line pattern fills
  • SVG-fills
  • raster fills
  • shape burst fills
• layer effects

In the screenshot below you can see the same data extent - on the left QGIS with the original rendering - on the right the exported DXF file rendered in Autodeskt TrueView.

If you want to use all of the above mentioned export features, you have to use QGIS 2.10. There will be a backport of the functionality to version 2.8.3.

The DXF export functionality was developed by Jürgen Fischer (Norbit) and Marco Hugentobler (Sourcepole AG). The project was co-financed by SIGE (utility provider in Vevey) and the municipalities of Vevey, Morges and Uster.