ViewCompanion Premium

View, Review and Convert Technical Files

ViewCompanion Premium is the most powerful edition in the ViewCompanion family, combining AutoCAD DWG support with powerful tools for viewing, printing, converting, annotating, measuring, and comparing technical drawings and documents.
It supports Adobe PDF, PDF/A, AutoCAD DWG, Autodesk DWF, PLT, CGM, TIFF, CALS and many other file formats.

ViewCompanion Premium includes powerful PDF and image-processing tools, with support for a wide range of output formats including PDF, PDF/A, DWG and DXF. See the complete list of supported output formats below.

AutoCAD DWG Support

Open, view and convert AutoCAD DWG files without AutoCAD installed. ViewCompanion Premium also lets you print, batch print, annotate, measure, and compare DWG drawings using the same familiar tools available for other supported technical drawing formats.
Learn more about DWG support in ViewCompanion Premium

Conversion and Printing

Viewcompanion includes both batch conversion and batch printing.
You can also monitor a folder for incoming files and automatically print or convert them using predefined settings.
This makes it easy to automate repetitive document-processing tasks and streamline high-volume workflows.

Accurate Measurement and Takeoff Tools

Use ViewCompanion to measure distances, dimensions, and areas directly in technical drawings and documents. Measurement points can snap to drawing geometry, helping you select exact locations for precise results.
Measurements can be calibrated to the drawing scale, ensuring correct results even when a drawing is not at 1:1 scale. Measurement data can also be exported to Excel (XLSX) or CSV for reporting, estimating, or further analysis.

Use the measurement and annotation tools to perform digital takeoffs directly from drawings and documents.
Learn more about digital takeoff in ViewCompanion

Compare Document and Drawing Revisions

Use ViewCompanion to compare different revisions of a document or drawing and clearly visualize the differences.
All supported file formats can be compared, including PDF and DWG. Multipage files can be compared page by page.
Learn more about file comparison in ViewCompanion

Annotate Documents and Technical Drawings

Add annotations and markups to technical drawings and documents using text, highlights, stamps, arrows, barcodes, symbols, images, freehand markup, and more.
Annotations are stored in a separate markup file, leaving the original document unchanged. Markups can be displayed as needed and included when printing or converting the document.
Learn more about annotation and markup tools in ViewCompanion

Powerful PDF Tools

ViewCompanion Premium includes a wide range of tools for working with PDF files. You can merge and split documents, rotate pages, add watermarks, create searchable PDFs with OCR, convert PDF files to PDF/A, compare revisions, extract pages, optimize files, and more.
These tools make it easier to prepare, organize, review, and archive PDF documents without using a separate PDF application.

The built-in PDF-to-CAD tools allow you to convert PDF files into editable AutoCAD DWG, DXF, Gerber, CGM, and SVG formats, making it easy to reuse drawing data in CAD and engineering applications.
Learn more about PDF tools in ViewCompanion Premium

Getting Started

New to ViewCompanion?
Visit the Getting Started page for a quick introduction to the interface and basic features.
Learn how to open files, navigate documents, and perform common tasks such as viewing, annotating, comparing, and converting them.

Key Features

• View, annotate, convert, and print a wide range of file formats.
• Compare two drawings or documents and quickly identify differences.
• Annotate your files with text, symbols, stamps, barcodes, images, measurements, and more.
• Measure distances, areas, angles, and more with snap to drawing geometry for improved accuracy.
• Use measurement and annotation tools to perform digital takeoffs.
• Advanced printing and plotting features for technical drawings and documents.
• Includes both batch conversion and batch printing.
• Watch folder conversion: Monitor a folder and automatically convert all files created in or copied to the folder.
• Watch folder printing: Monitor a folder and automatically print all files created in or copied to the folder.
• Use the PDF to CAD tool to convert your PDF files into editable DWG, DXF, DWF, PLT, SVG, and CGM files.
• Easily add watermarks to your PDFs — whether you're working with a single file or processing multiple files in batches.
• Conform, or convert, any PDF file into PDF/A standard for archiving. Supports both batch processing and single-file conversion.
• Merge multiple PDF files into a single multi-page PDF file.
• Split a multipage PDF into separate files based on either a maximum number of pages or a maximum file size for each output file.
• Tile large-format PDF pages into smaller pages or separate files.
• Create searchable PDF files from scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).
• Improve scanned documents with advanced raster processing tools for deskewing, cleanup, foxing removal, resizing, and more.
• Pen table support provides full control of colors, line styles, and line widths for printing and conversion.
  AutoCAD CTB plot style tables are also supported for DWG files.
• Color, grayscale, or black-and-white viewing, printing, and conversion.
• Overlay up to 10 drawings and print or convert them as a single combined drawing.
• Automate conversion and printing with the powerful command-line interface.

Supported File Formats

ViewCompanion Premium supports the following input file formats:

• Adobe PDF
• AutoCAD DWG and DXF 2D⁽¹⁾
• Autodesk DWF and DWFx 2D
• Autodesk Inventor Drawings (IDW)⁽²⁾
• AVIF Image Format
• BMP (Windows Bitmap format)
• Calcomp Plotter Format
• CALS type 1 and 2
• CGM (Computer Graphics Metafile) ⁽²⁾
• DCX (Multipage PCX)
• ECW (Enhanced Compression Wavelet)
• EDMICS C4 (Group 4 Tiled)
• EMF (Windows Enhanced Metafile)
• EMZ (Compressed Windows Enhanced Metafile)
• Excellon Drill Format
• Gerber RS-274D, RS-274X, X2 and X3
• GIF
• HEIC
• Intergraph Raster File Formats
• JPEG
• JPEG2000
• JPEG XL
• PCX (PC Paintbrush format)
• PLT, HPGL, HPGL/2, HP-RTL and KIPGL files
• PNG (Portable Network Graphics)
• PSD (Adobe Photoshop)
• SFF (Structured Fax Format)
• TGA (Truevision Targa)
• TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
• WebP (Google Image Format for the WEB)

1. Supports AutoCAD DWG file versions from AutoCAD R12 through AutoCAD 2027.
2. Support for Autodesk Inventor IDW file format requires Autodesk Apprentice Server to be installed on the same computer.
   Download Autodesk Apprentice Server 2027 here — available free of charge.
3. Supports CGM files using both binary and clear-text encodings. Supported profiles include ATA, CALS, WebCGM, and CGM*PIP.

• Microsoft® Excel
• Microsoft® PowerPoint
• Microsoft® Word
• OpenOffice Document Format
• RTF (Rich Text Format)
• Lotus Word Pro ⁽¹⁾
• Microsoft Visio ⁽¹⁾
• SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) ⁽¹⁾
• WordPerfect ⁽¹⁾

1. File formats marked with (1) are supported only when LibreOffice is installed.
   Learn more about LibreOffice integration and how it extends the file format support available in ViewCompanion.

ViewCompanion Premium can convert to the following file formats:

• Adobe Postscript®
• AutoCAD DWG
• Autodesk DXF
• Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM Binary)
• Gerber RS-274X
• Scalable Vector Graphics

The following file formats are classified as vector: PDF, CGM, DWF, DWFx, DWG, DXF, HPGL/2, PLT, IDW, Excellon, Gerber and Calcomp.

1. AVI files can be created by using the Movie Maker tool. This tool will let you add multiple files, of all the different formats ViewCompanion supports, to a movie. Each page from all the added files will be converted to a single frame in the movie.
2. MIL-PRF-28002B Type 1 (CALS Raster format used for technical drawings and document archiving).
3. No additional applications or drivers are required for conversion.