Viewing AutoCAD drawings

Vector Image Formats

There are at least two vector choices for publishing AutoCAD data, DWG and DWF files.

1. Viewing and Publishing DWF Files

   DWF (Design Web Format) is a file format proposed as a standard by Autodesk for making AutoCAD drawings available on the web. DWF files are optimized for web viewing. They are smaller than DWG files, can contain URL links, and allow you to distribute an image while keeping your DWG files proprietary, if you wish.

   See Viewing AutoCAD DWF Images for DWF viewing options. Pima County's Parcel Maps were originally generated with these Autodesk tools.  Since the Release 13 Internet Publishing Kit, AutoCAD has been able to create DWFs with the DWFOUT command.

   CADViewer offers a way you can serve DWF files without requiring a plug-in. CADViewer uses a 100% Java applet rather than a plug-in, enabling viewing on any Java-enabled platform without any special user action.

2. Viewing and Publishing DWG Files

   See Viewing AutoCAD DWG Files If your web server software supports the generation of automatic directory listings, you can publish your DWG or DWF library just by pointing to it's root directory. You may choose to keep both DWG and DWF formats in the same directories.

   To serve DWG files, it is usually necessary to configure your web server for the correct MIME type for DWG files. Otherwise, browser plug-ins won't recognize the drawing files. For instance, for Internet Information Server version 4, right-click on the server name to get its properties. Then set the "Associated Extension" to

       .dwg
   

   and set the "Content Type (MIME)" to

       image/vnd.dwg
   

   Here's the complete list of MIME types recommended by Autodesk for their files:

       .dwg   image/vnd.dwg
       .dxf   image/vnd.dxf
       .dwf   drawing/x-dwf
   

   Other DWG MIME types of image/x-dwg and drawing/x-dwg are in use by some web servers, but they don't appear to be the currently official registered DWG types.