Architects and survey firms commonly use general purpose CAD software called AutoCAD to create design work for their discipline. You may well want to use an AutoCAD drawing by other professionals that you hope to use as a base plan on which to create your landscape design. AutoCAD drawing files have the extension .dwg and it can be difficult to convert an AutoCAD dwg file to a form that will load in gCADPlus. To do this, we recommend the use of a free file conversion tool called ODA converter that is produced by a group called the Open design Alliance. The ODA tool can be set up to convert dwg to a binary form of an exchange format called DXF. Once that’s done the DXF file can be imported into the gCADPlus drawing environment.
This movie shows the use of the ODA File Converter in action. We set input and export criteria in the ODA tool and run to process a complex AutoCAD drawing (in dwg format) to a binary DXF file ready for gCADPlus. The binary DXF is a very efficient file format and the file size if often 50% less than a corresponding ASCII DXF file.
Here is a link to download a copy of the ODA converter.
And a link to more information on dwg files.