Convert 3DM to DXF

Free, in your browser, with nothing uploaded. Drop your .3dm file in and take the .dxf away.

Drop your 3DM file here

.3dm in, .dxf out

Choose files

Nothing is uploaded No account, no email No file size limit

How to convert 3DM to DXF

  1. 01

    Add your .3dm file

    Drag your Rhino 3DM file onto the drop zone, or click it to browse. Nothing is uploaded: it is read where it already sits.

  2. 02

    Check the preview

    The model is parsed on your machine and drawn in the viewport, so a wrong axis or a missing texture shows up before you commit rather than downstream.

  3. 03

    Save the .dxf file

    Press convert. The AutoCAD Drawing Interchange Format file is written in the tab and lands in your downloads folder. No link, no expiry, no account.

What carries over, and what does not

A format conversion is a translation, and translations lose things. Here is what actually happens when a 3DM file becomes a DXF file.

Data3DMDXFSurvives
GeometryYesYesYes
Materials & colourYesYesYes
Texture mapsYesNoDropped
Animation & rigsNoNon/a
Scene hierarchyYesYesYes

Expect to lose

  • DXF has no concept of texture coordinates or image maps; the model comes out untextured.

None of this is a defect in the conversion; it is what DXF is specified to hold. If you need the missing data, convert to GLB instead, which carries geometry, PBR materials, textures and animation in a single file.

What our DXF writer puts in the file

Geometry as 3DFACE entities, one layer per mesh, with true colour on each face. 3DFACE is the entity every DXF reader implements, which matters more here than a mesh entity that would be more compact and less widely understood.

About Rhino 3DM

3DM is McNeel Rhino’s native format and, unusually for CAD, it is genuinely open: the OpenNURBS toolkit that reads and writes it has been published freely since the 1990s. It holds NURBS surfaces, curves and solids alongside layers, materials and the render meshes Rhino keeps for display. Those render meshes are what convert here; the underlying NURBS mathematics has no equivalent in a polygon format.

Commonly seen in: Rhino, Grasshopper, architecture, jewellery design, marine design. More on the 3DM format page.

About AutoCAD Drawing Interchange Format

DXF is the format Autodesk publishes so other software can read AutoCAD data, and it has been the neutral CAD exchange format since the 1980s. Most DXF files in the wild are 2D drawings; what converts here is the 3D geometry: 3DFACE and polyface meshes, so extruded or solid-modelled shapes come through while dimensions, hatches and text do not.

Commonly seen in: AutoCAD, LibreCAD, QCAD, Fusion 360, laser cutters, CNC. More on the DXF format page.

How the conversion works

When you drop a file in, the bytes are handed to a parser compiled to run in your browser. The 3DM data is decoded into an in-memory scene graph of meshes, materials and transforms, which is what the preview is drawing. Pressing convert walks that scene graph back out through a DXF writer and hands you the resulting bytes as a download.

The whole round trip is local. The page itself is static: it is delivered once and then does its work offline. That is why the privacy claim is checkable rather than a promise.

3DM to DXF: common questions

Is my 3DM file uploaded anywhere?

No. The file is read by code running inside this browser tab and never crosses the network. You can prove it by disconnecting from the internet before you convert, the page keeps working, or by watching the Network tab in your browser's developer tools while you drop a file in.

How large a 3DM file can I convert?

There is no server-side limit because there is no server. The practical ceiling is your own machine's memory: a browser tab can usually handle models up to a few hundred megabytes. Very dense scans or scenes with millions of triangles will take a few seconds and a lot of RAM.

Why does my converted DXF file look untextured?

DXF stores geometry only; it has no way to record materials or texture maps. If you need the surfacing to survive, convert to GLB or glTF instead.

Does it cost anything?

No. There is no fee, no account, no watermark and no per-file limit. Since the conversion runs on your hardware rather than ours, serving this page costs about as much as serving a blog post.

Does it work on a Mac, on Windows or on a phone?

All of them. There is nothing to install: any browser with WebGL 2 will do, which covers current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on desktop, and Safari and Chrome on mobile. A phone has less memory than a laptop, so a very heavy scene may be the one thing it cannot finish.

Related conversions

Other things to do with the same file.

From 3DM:

Other ways to get to DXF:

Or do something else with it:

Further reading

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