Gear DXF Help v3.1.

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GearDXF supports the design of Spur, Internal and Rack gears which can be exported to 2D DXF and SVG files or 3D STL
files.

Menu Bar
• Export (Ctrl+S): Saves the gear design to a 2D DXF or SVG file of your choosing. (See Export.)
• Extrude (Ctrl+E): Opens the Extrusion window with an ability to export 3D STL files. (See Extrusion.)
• Reset: Resets the gear properties to default values.
• Zoom to Fit (Ctrl+F): Causes the gear image to fill the Gear View.
• Adjust tool: A mouse tool for dragging left or right within the Gear View to change the selected gear property value.
(The properties in grey may not be changed.) The mouse can also be used with key modifiers for panning and
zooming, as shown in the Status Bar.
• Pan tool (hand icon) (Ctrl+P): A mouse tool to pan the gear image within the Gear View.
• Zoom tool (magnifier icon) (Ctrl+M): A mouse tool to zoom in or out on the gear image within the Gear View.
• Settings (gear icon): Opens a window to edit program settings. (See Settings.)
• Select Spur Gear, Internal Gear or Rack Gear: Select from three different types of gears that can be designed, each
with its own properties.
• Select units of Inches or Millimeters: Changes the units of measure by which values are displayed and the units that
are written when exporting data files. You can enter values with explicit units of either mode regardless of the
selected mode. There is also a Settings option to Suppress Units Display.
• Information (Ctrl+I): Shows an About box with copyright and other information about GearDXF.
• Help (F1): Links to this online help file.
Gear Properties
Displays the gear properties and allows the values for most to be modified. You can enter units, if you like. By default,
the units are those selected in the Menu Bar. A dropdown Scrubber Bar can be used to manipulate most properties with
mouse interaction where the arrow keys and page up/down keys make small and large changes in the values,
respectively. Or hold down the Shift key for small changes to become large ones. Using the mouse in the Gear view to
change properties has similar characteristics.

Module (M) and Diametral Pitch (DP) are two ways (Metric/Millimeter and Imperial/Inch, respectively) of expressing the
same concept of how wide the teeth are (or how many teeth there are per inch), with an inverse relationship between
the two: DP = 25.4 / M. As M increases, DP decreases, and the gear gets larger. Thus, the output properties for circular
gears (Tip, Pitch and Root Diameter) are all tied to the M/DP. Changing one changes the others. Gear manufacturers
generally restrict their products to a few common values for M/DP. So, designing a gear for a specific Tip Diameter, for
example, may result in a non-standard M/DP and an inability to mesh with retail manufactured gears. Similarly, the
Length of a Rack gear will grow as M increases (DP decreases).

Pressure Angle is also an important gear design parameter. Values of 14½, 20 and 25 are typical where 20 seems most
common with good strength and power transmission qualities.

There’s a fundamental rule of designing gear drive systems that mesh properly: The Module (Diametral Pitch) and the
Pressure Angle must match for all meshing gears in the system! Gears should also be mounted so the pitch circles (or
pitch heights) meet tangent to one another for the best efficiency and least backlash. For example, the centers of two
spur gears should be separated by a distance equal to their combined Pitch Diameters divided by two. GearDXF does not
specify any gear clearance, so a small amount of additional separation may be required to avoid jamming. Some of the
precise geometry of the tooth profile may also be lost with the imprecision of 3D printing or other CAM processes, so
some tweaking may be required to get good results.

GearDXF copies the Module (Diametral Pitch), the Pressure Angle and Curve Segment Length as the gear type is changed to
help insure the consistency of these gear meshing properties across the gears in a design. (See Export and Extrusion for
more information about the Curve Segment Length property.)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gear#Nomenclature for additional details about gear nomenclature.

Status Bar
Provides feedback during operation of the program, describing how to use the mouse to adjust gear properties or
modify the Gear View.

Gear View
Shows a live view of the gear as its properties are changed. Using tools from the Menu Bar and the mouse you can zoom
in to view a specific portion of the gear or view it in its entirety.
Settings

Many program settings allow for customization of the Gear View display, colors and styles.

Export
The Export button shows a Save dialog for selecting a 2D export file format and file name. Two output formats are
currently supported:

• DXF file: Setting the DXF Write Preferences Save Curves as Lines property will cause the cubic Bezier curves, used for
spur and internal gear tooth profiles, to be approximated with line segments of roughly the length specified by the
Curve Segment Length gear property. Used by default, Bezier curves are smoother and more precise. But this option is
useful for programs lacking support for Bezier curves when importing DXF files.
• SVG file: SVG files are growing in popularity as an image format for the web. But as a scalable vector format, SVG is
also valuable as a simple and non-proprietary exchange format for vector data. SVG supports lines, arcs and Bezier
curves. But seen primarily as an image format, some programs that read SVG files may arbitrarily scale the data as
an image viewer, requiring some manually scaling be applied to restore the designed dimensions and units in the
file.
Extrusion

The Extrude button launches the Extrusion window, generating a 3D model of the gear being designed. The window
remains open, updating live as the gear properties are changed. The Top gear property specifies the height, or thickness,
of the gear as it is extruded to a 3D model.

• Export STL(Ctrl+S): Saves the gear design to a 3D STL file of your choosing.
• Zoom to Fit (Ctrl+F): Resets the 3D view and causes the gear image to fill the Gear View.
• Left mouse drag: Changes the camera view in an orbit around the gear.
• Scroll wheel: Zooms the gear view in and out.
• Right mouse drag: On the gear top surface to change the Top value and the height of the extrusion.

Both the STL format and the 3D view model support only triangular faces with straight line edges. Arcs and curves in the
gear design are approximated with line segments of roughly the length specified by the Curve Segment Length gear
property. You can observe the quality of the output live in the Extrusion window while manipulating the Curve Segment
Length. At some point, smaller values creating many line segments may slow down 3D model generation and rendering,
causing reduced responsiveness. Gears with large numbers of teeth may have the same effect.
GearDXF Release Notes
• Version 3.1.2
o fix: Problems when Windows' Region settings for 'Decimal symbol' and 'Digit grouping' were not '.' and ','
respectively
o fix: 'Diameter' rings showed up in extrusion; and should draw on top of gear
o fix: Scrubber large change increment
o fix: Tooth end cap arcs became full circles as tooth edges overlap with large Pressure Angles
o added: Splash screen
o fix: Top value display for extrusion was fixed at mm, now displays according to units set
o added: Change Top value by right-clicking the top surface in the Extrusion window and dragging up or down
o added: “DPI Awareness” – GearDXF should look better when scaling is set to other than %100 in Windows
“Display settings”
• Version 3.1.1
o Copy the Module (Diametral Pitch), the Pressure Angle and Curve Segment Length as the gear type is changed
o Add Rack Gear Length property.
• Version 3.1
o Added 3D extrusion and STL export.
o Moved ‘Curve Segment Length’ from program setting to gear property to visualize live update in the Extrusion
window.
• Version 3.0.1
o Fixed bug with tooth profiles crossing below the Base Circle. (E.g. with large number of teeth.)
o Added SVG as an output format for saving gear profiles.
• Version 3.0
o Added support for Rack and Internal gears
o Modified ‘Root Fillet Radius’ to better fillet root corners
o Added grid to view
o Added ‘Edit Preferences’ dialog
o Added preferences to control display colors and styles
o Added ‘Save Curves as Lines’ option for DXF output
o Removed support for annotations layer
• Version 2.2
o Added ‘Module’ property as metric corollary to ‘Diametral Pitch’
o Improved tooth profiles with Bezier curves
o Added property trackbar and Gear View mouse UI mechanisms for changing property values
• Version 2.1.1
o Fixed bug related to large numbers of teeth
• Version 2.1.0
o Modified gear profile so that first tooth is aligned with positive X-axis
o Added Bore Hole property
o Made output 'Diameter' properties modifiable (all cause changes to Diametral Pitch)
o Allow grid selection to determine property manipulated using the mouse
o Added Help file
o New setup mechanism (old setup no longer supported by MS Visual Studio)