Drawing Exchange Format (DXF)

Drawing Exchange Format (DXF) is a file format designed by Autodesk to allow exchange with their AutoCAD software. While they publish specs it is not an open format as they alone control iterations to the format. Autodesk and the Open Design Alliance sell commercial licenses for accessing DXF files. There is generally better support for DXF in free/libre software, compared to DWG.

DXF can be thought of as an exchange version of the Drawing (DWG) format developed by Autodesk. File sizes may be larger, as it is in plaintext, whereas DWG is binary, and it may not contains data of proprietary AutoCAD extensions. Autodesk has discouraged the use of DWG, by inserting an encrypted proprietary signature that determines whether or not a DWG comes from Autodesk software. However, despite this discouragement, DWG creation is commonplace.

The LibreDWG project has an example application for SVG and Postscript conversion, converters from and to DXF.

The Open Design Alliance has a freely available proprietary ODA File Converter for converting between different versions of .dwg and .dxf

See also

• DXF at Wikipedia
• Autodesk DXF Reference

Support for DXFs in free software

2D and 3D DXFs can be imported and exported by Blender and FreeCAD. 2D DXFs are supported in LibreCAD, and QCAD.

Blender is capable of importing DXFs with absolute coordinates with the BlenderGIS add-on. However, this workflow may have issues in recent releases. Blender's support for DXF is based on an older DXF library, and therefore may have compatibility issues with newer DXFs being produced.