AutoCAD DXF

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AutoCAD DXF is a file format, developed by Autodesk, in order to facilitate AutoCAD drawings to be opened by other CAD programs.

AutoCAD's native file format is DWG (Drawing) and couldn't be opened by other CAD programs. Therefore the DXF was introduced (Drawing exchange format) as standard ASCII text files to store the vector data of the drawing.

File structure

Since the file contains plain ASCII it can be read with any text-editor. The basic organization of an AutoCAD DXF file is as follows:

HEADER section – General information about the drawing. Each parameter has a variable name and an associated value.
TABLES section – This section contains definitions of named items.

Linetype (LTYPE) table

Layer table

Text style (STYLE) table

View table

User Coordinate System (UCS) table

Viewport configuration (VPORT) table

BLOCKS section – This section contains Block Definition entities describing the entities comprising each Block in the drawing.
ENTITIES section – This section contains the drawing entities, including any Block References.
END OF FILE

External links

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