DXF Medic
Text missing after a DXF import? Text was never geometry.
The DXF carries part numbers, labels, maybe a whole engraving layout. Every line and arc arrives in LightBurn or your CAM tool, but the text is gone, or shows up in the wrong font with stray formatting codes. Nothing got lost in transit. Text in a DXF is a different kind of thing from the lines around it.
Quick answer: TEXT and MTEXT entities store a string, a font reference and an insertion point, not the outlines of the letters. The importing program has to render the font itself, and many laser and CAM importers skip these entities or mangle their formatting. The fix: explode text to outlines in the source CAD before export. AutoCAD: TXTEXP (Express Tools). QCAD and LibreCAD: Modify > Explode. After that, the letters are ordinary polylines that every importer reads.
Why text rides along instead of arriving
A LINE entity is complete in itself: two coordinates, done. A TEXT entity is an instruction: render this string, in this font, at this point. The font lives on the author's machine, and the drawing only names it. MTEXT goes further and embeds inline formatting codes in curly braces for font switches, stacking and line breaks.
An importer without a font engine can only skip these entities. An importer with a font engine but without the original font substitutes another one, so widths, spacing and positions drift. That is why customer-supplied DXFs so often arrive with labels missing or mangled: the geometry survived, and the instructions could not be followed.
The fix: convert text to outlines before export
AutoCAD
Run TXTEXP from the Express Tools. It explodes TEXT and MTEXT into polyline outlines, which are plain geometry. Do it on a copy of the drawing, because exploded text stops being editable text. Then export the DXF as usual. If you receive files rather than make them, this is the one step to ask your customer for.
QCAD and LibreCAD
Place the text, then run Modify > Explode on it. The letters become contours you can export like any other geometry. As in AutoCAD, keep an unexploded copy of the drawing around, because you will want editable text again the moment a label changes.
Every other CAD
Look for a command named "explode", "convert to curves" or "text to outlines" and run it before the DXF export. The principle is the same everywhere: ship outlines, not font references. This is also the standing advice on the LightBurn forum for text-bearing DXFs.
After exploding: check that the outlines are closed
Exploded text turns each letter into several small contours, and engraving fills only work when those contours are properly closed. Text imported as DXF is a classic source of "shape is not closed" errors, with some letters filling and others not. If your fill misbehaves after the text finally arrives, run the file through an open-contour check; the open contours guide covers measuring and closing the gaps.
What DXF Medic tells you
When a DXF still contains live TEXT or MTEXT, DXF Medic names them as unsupported entities in its report. You learn exactly what vanished and why the imported drawing looks thinner than the original, instead of wondering whether the exporter, the file or the importer ate your labels. The same report covers the things Medic does repair: open contours with measured gaps, stacked points, degenerate entities, and missing units.
Medic does not convert text to outlines. That conversion needs the original font, so it has to happen in the CAD that owns it. What Medic gives you is certainty about what is in the file, before you ask a customer to re-export or start rebuilding labels by hand.
Check what is really in the file: drop the DXF into DXF Medic and unsupported entities like TEXT and MTEXT are named, not silently dropped, alongside findings for open contours, units and degenerate geometry. Diagnosis is free and unlimited, and the file never leaves your browser.
Check a file, freeRuns offline in your browser. No upload, no account.