DXF converters

DXF (Drawing Exchange Format) is the open exchange format of AutoCAD, published by Autodesk since 1982. Surveyors, architects and engineers use it to pass CAD drawings between programs. A DXF holds lines, polylines, arcs, circles, text, hatches and blocks on named layers, but no attribute table and no coordinate system.

Convert DXF

• SHP → DXFConvert Shapefile (SHP) to DXF
• DXF → SHPConvert DXF to Shapefile (SHP)

What to know about DXF

• Plain text (or binary) with drawing entities on named layers; blocks are reusable symbols inserted many times.
• There is no attribute table: besides the geometry, an entity has a layer, a color, a line type and, for text, the text itself.
• The coordinate system is not stored; coordinates are just numbers, often in a national grid or in local site units.
• DWG is AutoCAD's own binary format, not the same thing as DXF.

File extensions: .dxf