In many supplier plants the drawing does not arrive as a PDF but as a DWG or DXF file. If you have no CAD system in house, you are stuck: no program, no view — no view, no inspection plan. This article shows how such files can still be ballooned, entirely without a CAD installation.
DWG and DXF — briefly placed
DWG is the native format of AutoCAD and many compatible programs; DXF is the open exchange format that goes with it. Both hold the drawing as real geometry with real text — unlike a scan, dimensions, tolerances and annotations are machine-readable inside them. That is good news for ballooning: what exists as text does not have to be guessed by OCR.
The classic detour — and its snags
The usual route runs through a CAD viewer or the design office: open the file, print to PDF, pass the PDF on. It works, but it has snags. It needs a licence or a colleague, it costs a round trip, and “printing” can turn real text into pure graphics — at which point OCR starts all over again.
Import directly instead of having it converted
DrawingStamp Pro opens DWG and DXF files directly: on import the drawing is converted internally into a vector representation with real text and then runs through the same detection as a native vector PDF — dimensions, diameter symbols, tolerances. No CAD program needs to be installed, and the file never leaves your own machine.
Honestly: where the limits are
Fine-tuning dimensional fidelity on CAD import is still work in progress at our end — complex dimension styles or paper space layouts may look different than they do in CAD. The proven route therefore remains the vector PDF straight from CAD; the DWG/DXF import is the lifeline for every case where that PDF simply does not exist. If you regularly receive CAD files from customers, run both tracks: ask for the PDF, import DWG/DXF when none arrives.
Practical tips
- Order the PDF along with it: one sentence in the order confirmation (“please supply the drawing as PDF and CAD file”) saves detours later.
- Check the scale: after every import it pays to look at two or three prominent dimensions — do they match the view?
- Avoid the scan when CAD exists: a DWG is always a better source than a printout of the same drawing that was scanned back in.
Which other formats DrawingStamp Pro reads is covered in the frequently asked questions; the import can be tried out in the free beta test.