Home Products Purchase Download Support Resellers Developers Company

What is DWF

Drawing Web Format

DWF, or Design Web Format, is a file format developed by Autodesk for the distribution of drawing files to anyone who needs to view, review, or print design files. DWF files are highly compressed and are usually smaller and faster to transmit than the original design files, like DWG or DXF. The original design files, for example AutoCAD DWG, may depend on external resources such as referenced drawings, plot styles and fonts. The DWF file will contain all information that are needed for displaying the design correctly. The main purpose of DWF is to allow designers, engineers, and others to communicate design information and design content to anyone needing to view, review, or print design information without the need of knowledge of a specific CAD software, like for example AutoCAD. You will find more information about the DWF format on Wikipedia. Files in DWF format usually end with a .dwf or a .dwfx extension.
DWFx DWFx is the newest version of the DWF file format, and it is based on the XML Paper Specification (XPS). You can read more about the XPS specification, ISO/IEC 29500-2:2008 Open Packaging Conventions online. DWFx files are typically larger than DWF files due to the XPS format overhead, although both DWF and DWFX formats offer considerable compression compared to native CAD formats. DWFx is a more universally accessible version of the DWF format, offering better compatibility with standard Windows environments through its XPS foundation.

Our Software that supports DWF/DWFX ViewCompanion can view, compare, annotate, print and convert DWF and DWFx 2D files. All our software products can convert many other file formats into DWF format. All ViewCompanion editions can convert DWF and DWFX files into PDF, DXF and a lot of other formats. If you want more information about a specific ViewCompanion edition you can look at the product pages: ViewCompanion Standard ViewCompanion Pro ViewCompanion Premium Both our developer tools, scViewerX and scConverter can open and create DWF and DWFx 2D files.