Bend Annotations

A bend annotation is a line of text written onto each bend in the flat DXF, telling the press-brake operator how to fold it — for example 1: 90.0 UP R6.0. You build that text yourself from plain characters plus tokens, and CADshift fills in each bend’s real numbers on export.

It’s part of your Output Profile, so once you set it up every export uses it.

Where to set it

1. Export and click the green check to open the DXF Export Preview window.
2. Click the gear button next to the Profile drop-down (Edit DXF output profiles).
3. In the editor, click Bend annotation in the left list. (Clone a built-in profile first if needed.)

Building the text

In the Template box, type plain text and drop in tokens (the blue pills). A Live preview under the box shows the result as you type. The starting template is:

{id}: {angle:0.0} {dir} R{radius:0.0}

which comes out like 1: 90.0 UP R6.0.

Tokens

A length-style token can carry decimals and a unit — click a pill’s ▾ to set them, e.g. {radius:0.0} or {radius:0.00:in}.

The controls

• Method — where the text goes:

  • Text On Layer — visible text on the bend-annotation layer.
  • X Data — hidden DXF metadata (for software that reads it).

• Direction render — how {dir} is written:

  	Up bend	Down bend
  Word	UP	DN
  Sign	+	−
  Binary01 / Binary12	1	0 or 2

• Up word / Down word — the words used when Direction render = Word (defaults UP and DN).

• Text height — the annotation text height (default 3.0).

• Anchor — where the text sits on the bend line: Midpoint, Start, End, or Above Midpoint.

The text lands on whatever layer you named the Bend annotations row in the Layers grid — turn that row’s eye off to disable annotations entirely.

Troubleshooting

Next steps

• Set the bend-annotation layer’s name and colour — Layer Configuration
• Shorten the bend lines themselves to stubs — Trim Bend Lines
• Engrave part data onto the face — Etch Text
• See the whole profile system — DXF Output Profiles