export svg

Home > Exporting SVG

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Saving, Exporting & Files

Exporting SVG

Export exact vector paths from a selection.

Locus exports your geometry as clean, exact SVG - the kind of clean vector file other tools want. Curves stay curves; nothing is chopped into little straight segments behind your back.

How to export

Select the objects you want, then choose File > Export > SVG (under the File menu's Export group). You'll be prompted for a filename, and the file is written straight to disk - in the desktop app through a native Save panel (Finder on macOS, File Explorer on Windows), in the browser as a direct download.

Only what you've selected is exported. Groups expand to their members automatically, so selecting a group exports everything inside it.

Exact paths, not facets

Each shape is written as its true vector form:

• Segments export as lines.
• Circles export as real circles.
• Arcs export as real arcs.
• Regions and booleans export as exact outline paths (a full-circle outline collapses back to a plain circle).

The result is measured in millimeters, so it drops into any workflow at real size. Because the paths are exact rather than faceted, edges come out smooth - this is what keeps output quality high.

Note

A couple of object types can't be exported and are simply skipped: points, infinite lines, and rays. A count of what was skipped comes back with the export, so you'll know if anything was left out. Elliptical arcs are the one exception to "exact" - they come across as a fine multi-point curve.

Fills export too

Closed shapes carry their fill into the SVG. A filled circle, ellipse, or region exports with its fill color, and its opacity comes along as an fill-opacity attribute (written only when it's below full). Open shapes have nothing to fill and export as strokes only.

Note

Each region contour exports as its own path, so a boolean-difference hole would fill solid rather than punching through. For a single filled circle or a simple region - the common case - the fill comes out exactly as you see it.

Line weights export per shape

Each shape keeps its own stroke width in the file, in millimeters, so a drawing whose line weights vary comes out looking the way it does on screen - a heavy outline stays heavy next to a fine one. This holds for the model window, where each object's stroke width is its own, and for a single node's export, where the widths a Style node sets per object - including widths driven by a field - travel with each shape. A shape that has no width of its own takes the export's default width.

Groups and layers in the file

Your structure carries into the export: a group becomes a nested <g> in the SVG, tucked inside its layer, so the file opens with the same hierarchy you built rather than a flat pile of paths. And it isn't only closed shapes - points come across as small circle marks, and dimensions export too (see below).

Dimensions export as annotations

Dimensions are exported as real, baked geometry - extension lines, the dimension line, the value text, and the arrowheads, all together - nested under a single top-level Annotations group. Two things make them portable:

• Arrowheads are baked as actual filled shapes, not SVG <marker> elements. Markers are a web-only convenience that import lossily into Illustrator and don't survive DXF or other vector importers; a baked filled triangle (or open arrow / tick) round-trips unchanged. The head style, per-end on/off, and size come from the dimension's Heads setting: see Dimensions.
• They sit on their own Annotations layer, so a downstream toolchain can simply ignore them while your geometry goes through.

A dashed dimension line is honored in SVG; DXF collapses it to solid.

Reference images don't export

Any reference image you've placed as a backdrop is a tracing aid only - it never appears in the exported SVG. You get just the vector geometry, ready to use. See reference images.

Exporting a single node's output

You don't have to realize a node onto the drawing first to export it. Right-click a node and choose Export as... > SVG to export that node's own geometry directly from the node graph - handy for pulling one generated piece straight out.

Tip

Choose SVG for most uses and for handing art to other apps. If you're feeding CAD or CAM software, DXF is usually the better fit.

Hairline-black export

For a purely vector destination, turn on Hairline-black export in Settings - it covers both SVG and DXF. With it on, every exported path drops its fill, stroke color, and stroke weight and comes out as a single thin black hairline - the form a downstream vector toolchain expects, rather than your on-screen inks. It applies to the whole-model export and a single node's export alike.

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Export grouping

Layers in the exported file follow the Export grouping setting. By default each object keeps its own grouping. Switch to Group by Outline Color and shapes are sorted by outline color instead, one layer per color. See Export grouping.

Related

• Exporting DXF
• The .locus file