DXF 04-05-06 Goes Missing

Here's one for the conspiricy theorists: Autodesk has removed its DXF documentation from its Web site. Instead, "the DXF Reference is provided in the Developer Guide section of Help." That means you have to now buy a copy of AutoCAD (or something else) to learn about the "open" drawing interchange format.

Just the now-long-obsolete (by nearly half-a-decade) Release 2000 version of DXF is still available.

Well, you can always fill out the feedback form:

Give us your feedback on this document:
* Resolved my issue.
* Helpful but incomplete.
* Difficult to find.
* Difficult to understand.
* Did not resolve my issue.
* Document contains broken links and references.
* No comment.

Comments

[Evan Yares]

In his February 3, 2005 blog entry, Autodesk Technical Marketing Manager Shaan Hurley says that the "safe, highly reliable choice" for "anyone using the latest AutoCAD" to "share files with users of any AutoCAD or other CAD program" is to "export to the Drawing Interchange Format DXF which is a publicly documented format."

Nice notion, except for the small detail that the current version of the format isn't actually publicly documented.

But, even though publicly documented, the older version 2000 format is not completely documented. It doesn't take too much looking to find that some of the data in the format is "proprietary."

It would seem that, even though you may own a DXF file, Autodesk is saying parts of your data belong to them. That is what the word "proprietary" means.

Maybe the safer choice is to is use DWGgateway (a free program based on the Open Design Alliance's DWGdirect libraries) to export to the OpenDWG format -- which actually is a publicly documented format.

[Shaan Hurley]

Alright, you can land the black helicopters.

It looks like there are web re-designs or edits going on as the DXF format documentation is still available and no plans to remove it. In cases like this before the speculations are seeded and unleashed, just ask why the link was broken or if someone knows it was.

The links on Autodesk web sites are database driven due to the amount of data and sometimes the database links can change.
http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/dxf_format.pdf

My comments as referenced by Evan Yares are 100% valid and for more reasons than Evan likes or is willing to admit.

[Shaan Hurley]

http://usa.autodesk.com/getdoc/id=TS63479

[Evan Yares]

Shaan didn't seem to read the original blog entry here. The DXF spec for AutoCAD 2000 is on the Autodesk web site, just as it has been all along. But the DXF spec for AutoCAD 2004 and up is not. You have to go buy a copy of AutoCAD to get it.

Shaan also misses the point that, no matter where the specs for DXF may be, they are INCOMPLETE and DO NOT PROVIDE ENOUGH INFORMATION to completely and accurately read or write a DXF file.

The simple truth is, that if DXF were an adequate solution for interoperability, then hundreds of application developers wouldn't have banded together to create the Open Design Alliance, a non-profit consortium.

What I find funny about Shaan's promotion of DXF is that that Autodesk, after they first acquired Revit, for quite some time sold a version of that software which used DWG libraries from the Open Design Alliance. Apparently because DXF wasn't good enough.

[Shaan Hurley]

Evan,

You are spinning air on so many levels it is not worth playing silly games in Ralph's blog comments.

The 2004 format is the 2006 format. They are compatible just like the DWG format.

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/dxf_format.pdf

[Evan Yares]

I was wrong on the availability of the 2004-2006 DXF spec online.

Like Ralph, I looked in the Autodesk knowledge base, and it said only the 2000 DXF version was available on the web, and that I'd have to go to my software (where I found it.) I guess I shouldn't take such things at face value.

I looked at the link that Shaan posted, and it is the 2006 DXF format. Posted last week. Definitely a good thing, and I'm really pleased that Autodesk put the new DXF spec out in public.

The 2004, 2005, and 2006 DXF formats are not the same. For example, the 2005 and 2006 DXF formats include a definition for the TABLES entity, while the 2004 DXF format doesn't.

The 2004-2006 DXF specifications are still incomplete, missing critical information necessary to completely read or write a DXF file.

The next step, if Autodesk really wants DXF to be an acceptable data exchange tool, would be to document all of it.