If you are wondering what software you can use to be able to visualize DWG file layouts, then the best free and open source software that you can use as DWG viewer at your fingertips is On the other hand, it must be remembered that, given the dominant market share that AutoCAD has in industry and design, other programs have been allowed to support this DWG format thanks to an interchange / import-export file known as DXF (Drawing Exchange File).ĭWG has become a de facto standard, and since neither RealDWG nor DWGdirect are FOSS, the FSF (Free Software Foundation) has promoted the creation of libraries such as FreeDWG similar to OpenDWG.
This means that the different versions are not always compatible with each other. Over the years, they have been released versions with improvements, from DWG R1.0 for AutoCAD 1.0, to the most current DWG 2018 used in the latest versions of AutoCAD. Of course, it is a proprietary format, binary type, and that supports both 2D and 3D designs and metadata. 1982 was the year that this well-known software was first released.
dwg, and were created by the AutoDesk software company, Open Design Alliance, and others. DWG comes from DraWinG, a computer file format for computerized drawing used primarily in AutoDesk AutoCAD software, although there are other programs that support this format as well.įiles in this format use a extension.
