I love the ability to import DXFs from the MCAD program. It is a wonderful feature to facilitate coordination between the PCB and mechanical system. I recently discovered when trying to import a very complicated DXF that there apparently is a limit in size before KiCad says, “nope!”. I got this:
If I take the time to remove some things from the model before exporting to DXF, I can get it down to a size that doesn’t crash it. I’m not sure where the breaking point really is.
I suppose I’d consider this a bug. If there’s a size limitation, then I would hope the software would tell me gracefully. But there is a workaround, so no big deal really. Just thought I’d point it out.
Please report this to the bug database, https://gitlab.com/kicad/code/kicad/-/issues, and attach an example file which causes this. A crash is always the highest priority even if there’s a workaround.
Why do you think this is triggered by the size of the DXF file?
It could be that KiCad chokes on some kind of drawing entity in the .DXF file that it can not handle. There are also a lot of dialects for .DXF files. Sometimes it helps to save in another .DXF dialect, or load the .DXF in another program and save it there.
What happens if you press “Ignore”?
If Kicad then can continue with a partially loaded .DXF file then that gives a indication of where it chokes.
I agree with eelik. Any bug that crashes KiCad is taken very seriously. If the bug can be reproduced with a small DXF file because of some unsupported drawing entity that would be a bonus in narrowing it down.
