AutoCAD Drawing .dwg
AutoCAD’s native format, and mostly a 2D one.
What a .dwg file holds
DWG is AutoCAD’s own format and probably the most common CAD file in existence. It is also overwhelmingly a two-dimensional drawing format, which matters when you convert one: what comes through is the geometry that has a polygon equivalent. 3DFACE entities and filled solids become triangles; lines, arcs, circles and polylines, including the arc segments encoded in polyline bulges, become line geometry. What does not come through is the part people usually hope for: 3DSOLID entities are ACIS blobs that no open library tessellates, and text, dimensions and hatches mean nothing in a mesh format.
Commonly seen in: AutoCAD, BricsCAD, DraftSight, civil and architectural drawings, CNC and laser workflows.
| Data | Stored in DWG |
|---|---|
| Geometry | Yes |
| Materials and colour | No |
| Texture maps | No |
| Animation and rigs | No |
| Scene hierarchy | No |
| Read here | Yes |
| Written here | No |
Tested against a real file
The last sweep loaded example_2000.dwg from LibreDWG test data through the viewer on this site: 6 triangles across 1 meshes and 2 materials, in 3.3 seconds. Every format's result is on the test results page, run 2026-09-08.
Which way is up
DWG is a Z-up format, which most of the rest of 3D is not. Files are read exactly as written and stood up for you in the viewer; the converter has a switch for it, so a model does not arrive in the next program lying on its side.
Convert DWG to another format
Every pairing has a page saying what survives the trip.
Other things to do with a .dwg file
Questions about DWG
How do I open a .dwg file?
Drop it into the viewer on this site and it opens in the browser, with the scene tree, the materials and the mesh statistics. Nothing is uploaded. If you want it in another program instead, convert it to GLB, which almost everything reads.
Is DWG a good format to archive in?
DWG stores geometry. Anything outside that list will not be in the file at all, so archive the original alongside it if the surfacing or the rig matters.
Does converting DWG lose quality?
Geometry is copied vertex for vertex, so the shape does not degrade. What gets lost is whatever the target format has no field for: convert to STL and the materials go, convert to OBJ and the animation goes. The comparison table on each converter page says exactly which.
Formats that hold the same things
Or go back to the full format reference.