File Formats: Drawing Interchange Format (DXF)

DXF (Drawing Interchange Format) was first introduced by AutoDesk AutoCAD and is one of the most widely used CAD/CAM/CAE applications in the world. DXF is very popular and is supported by most 3D formats on PC platforms.

A DXF file is an ASCII file containing 2D and 3D components representing a drawing. Those components are known as Entities. The DXF file can represent almost any CAD drawing using those entities and can connect a group of entities together (such as windows, doors, etc.) and use them later in the file. The DXF file has seen many changes through the years, from version 2.6 to the latest release version 14. However, the latest release of AutoCAD still manages to open files created with any of the earlier versions.

LEADTOOLS supports all current variations of the DXF format: versions 2.6, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 (2000), 18 (2004).

You can load any of the DXF files as either vector images or raster images. Users can load a DXF file and save it to any file format supported by LEADTOOLS.

LEADTOOLS supports loading this format as a raster image, vector image, or SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) document.

This file format supports Geometric text, layout support, adding support for loading different paper spaces from DXF files.

This file format supports loading with different units and viewing multi-degree spline.

This file format is not supported in the Imaging Pro toolkits. Read and write support for this format is provided in the Document and Medical Imaging toolkits.

The file constants associated with this file format are:

When DXF files are rasterized, they are 24 BPP.

The following table indicates which objects LEAD can load and which objects it can save:

Required DLL: Leadtools.Vector.dll and Leadtools.Codecs.Dxf.dll. For a listing of the exact DLLs needed, based on the toolkit version, refer to Files To Be Included With Your Application .

Related Formats: CGM - Computer Graphics Metafile, CMX - Corel Presentation Exchange Format, DGN - Intergraph Format, DRW - Micrografx Designer DRaWing, DWF - DWF Format, DWG - DWG Format, EMF - Windows Metafile Formats, GBR - Gerber Format, PCL - Printer Command Language Format, PCT - Macintosh Pict Format, PDF - Portable Document Format, PLT - PLT / HPGL Format, PS - PostScript Document Format, RTF - Rich Text Format, SHP - ESRI Shape Format, SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics Format, WPG - WordPerfect Vector Format, WMF - Windows Metafile Formats, WMZ - Compressed Windows Metafile Format, E00 - ArcInfo Interchange File Format, MIF - MapInfo Interchange File Format.