Drawing Interchange File Formats Overview

AutoCAD can be used as a complete drawing editor. However, in some applications, other programs must examine AutoCAD drawings or generate drawings to be viewed, modified, or plotted with AutoCAD. Five types of file formats for importing and exporting drawing data are described in this appendix.

Drawing Interchange Format (DXF) files enable the interchange of drawings between AutoCAD and other programs. DXF files can be either ASCII or binary formats. Because ASCII DXF files are more common than the binary format, this chapter uses the term DXF file when referring to ASCII DXF files and the term binary DXF files when referring to the binary format.

Both ASCII and binary DXF files contain a complete description of the AutoCAD drawing. Because much of the data in an AutoCAD drawing does not have an equivalent object type in other programs, the Drawing Interchange Binary (DXB) file format is provided, which creates a simpler geometric description of the drawing.

This appendix also presents the Slide file format and the Slide Library file format.

• ASCII DXF File Format
• Binary DXF File Format
• DXB Files
• Slide File Format
• Slide Library File Format