AutoCAD 2005 for Dummies

  Exchanging AutoCAD drawing data with other programs sometimes works great the first time you try it. Sometimes, you have to try a bunch of techniques or exchange formats to get all the data to transfer in an acceptable way. Occasionally, no practical exchange method exists for preserving formatting or other properties that are important to you. Where your exchange efforts fall in this spectrum depends on the kind of drawings you make, the other programs you work with, and the output devices or formats that you use. I provide recommendations in this chapter, but be prepared to experiment.

Table 18-1 lists exchange formats between common programs and AutoCAD.

Table 18-1 Swapping Between AutoCAD and Other Programs

Swap	Recommended Formats
AutoCAD to AutoCAD LT	DWG
AutoCAD 2004 to AutoCAD R14	R12 DXF
AutoCAD to another CAD program	DXF or DWG
AutoCAD to humans who don’t have AutoCAD	PDF or DWF
AutoCAD to Word	WMF
Word to AutoCAD	RTF or TXT
AutoCAD to paint program	BMP
Paint program to AutoCAD	BMP or other raster format (use the AutoCAD IMAGE command)
AutoCAD to draw program	WMF
Draw program to AutoCAD	WMF
AutoCAD to the Web	DWF
Excel to AutoCAD	Windows clipboard, using Paste Special (see Chapter 9)
AutoCAD to Excel	CSV, using AutoCAD TABLEEXPORT command (see Chapter 9)

The remainder of this chapter gives you specific procedures for making most of the exchanges recommended in this table, as well as others.

DWG

DWG, AutoCAD’s native file format, is the best format for exchanging drawings with other AutoCAD or LT users. Use the SAVE and SAVEAS commands to create DWG files and the OPEN command to open them.

  AutoCAD LT can’t create every kind of object that AutoCAD can — raster attachments and most 3D objects, for example — but it can successfully read and save DWG files that contain these objects.

 Round-trip DWG fare

The most demanding — and elusive — kind of data exchange is called round-trip transfer. Round-trip means that you create and save a file in one program, edit and save it in another program, and then edit and save it in the first program again. A perfect round trip is one in which all the data survives and the users of both programs can happily edit whatever they want to. Unfortunately, the perfect round trip, like the perfect visit to your cousins, rarely happens.

In CAD, round-trip transfer becomes an issue when two people want to work on the same drawings with different CAD programs. AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT have excellent round-trip compatibility, as Chapter 1 explains. Expect a bumpier road if you’re exchanging drawings with users of other CAD programs. Perform some test transfers before you assume that your drawings can get from here to there and back again unscathed.

  AutoCAD 2005 can’t save to the AutoCAD Release 14 DWG format. Apparently, the Autodesk bigwigs figure that the best way to persuade R14 users to upgrade is to make their lives as inconvenient and isolated as possible! If you need to send AutoCAD 2005 drawings to AutoCAD R14 users, save them in R12 DXF format instead of a DWG format. (See the “DXF” section for instructions.)

Autodesk does not document the native AutoCAD DWG file format, and recommends that all file exchanges between AutoCAD and other CAD programs take place via DXF files (see the next section). But several companies have reverse-engineered the DWG format, and it’s now common for other CAD programs to read and sometimes write DWG files directly, with greater or lesser accuracy. Because the DWG format is complicated, isn’t