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DWG to DXF Converter

Convert a .dwg of any release — R12 to 2018 — into a clean R2000 ASCII DXF with its layers, blocks, text, dimensions and hatches intact. Free, online, no sign-up, and the reverse direction is one link away.

Drop a DWG here to get a DXF back.dwg (R12 to 2018) or .dxf (ASCII or binary) · up to 100 MB · phones and tablets welcomeChoose a DWG

How to convert DWG to DXF

Drop the .dwg

R12, R13, R14, 2000, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013 or 2018 — the converter reads the version word and picks the right decoder. Up to 100 MB.

Press Convert

The drawing is decoded into entities, tables and blocks and rewritten as an R2000 ASCII DXF. No options to set: there is one DXF worth writing, and this is it.

Download the .dxf

Open it in any CAD, CAM or cutting program. What was on layer A-WALL in the DWG is on layer A-WALL in the DXF, with the same colour and linetype.

What the DXF contains

A DXF is a DWG spelled out in text. This converter reads the DWG with a full decoder — not a graphics export — so the DXF carries the drawing's structure, not a picture of it.

Drawing content preserved in the DXF
What	How it carries over
Layers	Every layer with its colour, linetype, lineweight, on/off, frozen and locked state — including layers nothing is drawn on.
Blocks and inserts	Block definitions with their base point and entities; inserts with position, scale, rotation and attribute values. Nested blocks stay nested.
Geometry	Lines, polylines (bulges kept as bulges), circles, arcs, ellipses, splines with knots and weights, points, solids, 3D faces, rays and construction lines.
Text	TEXT and MTEXT with height, rotation, justification, style and the MTEXT formatting codes; text styles with their font names.
Dimensions and leaders	Dimension entities with their definition points, style and the block that holds their rendered geometry; leaders and multileaders.
Hatches	Solid and pattern hatches with boundary loops, pattern name, angle, scale and definition lines — associativity included.
Header	Units, extents, limits, linetype scale and the drawing's variables, so a metric plan opens as metric.

Output version: AC1015 (R2000), ASCII. That is the DXF release every program reads — see the FAQ for why there is no version picker.

When to convert DWG to DXF

Whenever the next program in the chain cannot read DWG. Laser cutters, plasma tables, CNC routers, vinyl cutters and their software (LightBurn, VCarve, SheetCam) read DXF and often nothing else. Open-source CAD — LibreCAD, QCAD, FreeCAD — opens DXF natively and DWG only through add-ons. Illustration tools such as Inkscape import DXF. GIS and survey packages exchange in DXF. And when a client asks for “the CAD file” without saying which, DXF is the one that will open on whatever they have.

It is also the honest archive format: a DXF from 1995 is still readable text, and a DXF from today will be in 2050. If you need the other way round — a DXF export from a cutter or a drawing program turned into a native DWG — use the DXF to DWG converter.

Limits

100 MB per DWG and 60 seconds per conversion; the DXF that comes back is usually three to five times the size of the DWG.
ACIS solids come through as wireframes; proxy objects from vertical applications are carried as opaque data where DXF allows and dropped where it does not.
The DWG’s embedded preview image is not written into the DXF.
One DXF version — R2000 ASCII. Binary DXF and the pre-1997 releases are not written; almost nothing still asks for them.

DWG to DXF — frequently asked questions

Which DXF version does the converter write?

R2000 ASCII DXF (AC1015). It is the version every program on the receiving end reads — laser and CNC software, LibreCAD, QCAD, FreeCAD, Inkscape, SolidWorks, and every CAD released since 1999 — and it holds everything a 2D drawing carries: layers, blocks, dimensions, hatches, MTEXT, splines. Newer DXF versions add nothing a cutter or a 2D program uses and are refused by older tools.

Will anything be lost going from DWG to DXF?

For 2D drawings, no: DXF was designed to hold exactly what DWG holds. What does not carry is what DXF was never able to say — proxy objects from vertical applications that the file only kept as opaque data, the drawing's thumbnail, and 3D ACIS solids, which come through as their wireframe. If the writer leaves something out, the result card says what.

Can it convert an old R12 or R14 DWG?

Yes. Every DWG release from R12 (1992) onward is read natively, so a drawing that has sat on a server since the last century converts the same as one saved yesterday. The 2019 to 2026 releases still write the 2018 format, so those open as well.

The DXF is much bigger than the DWG. Is that normal?

Completely. DWG is compressed binary; DXF is text with two lines per value. A 2 MB DWG typically comes out as a 6 to 10 MB DXF, and a hatch-heavy drawing can be larger still. It is not a sign that anything was added — it is the format. The DXF viewer opens it just as fast.

Do I need an account, and is my file kept?

No account, no e-mail, no watermark. The file is uploaded to be converted — DWG decoding is CPU work that runs on the server — and the DXF is returned to your browser in the same request. If you would rather nothing left your device, open the DWG in the free viewer, which runs in the browser, and Save As DXF from there.