.. _vector.dxf:

AutoCAD DXF
===========

.. shortname:: DXF

.. built_in_by_default::

DXF is an ASCII format used for interchanging AutoCAD drawings between
different software packages. OGR supports reading DXF files generated by
all recent versions of AutoCAD, and writing DXF files that are
compatible with AutoCAD 2004 and later.

DXF files are considered to have no georeferencing information through
OGR.

By default, the entire contents of the file are represented as a single
OGR layer named "entities". Features will all have the following generic
fields:

-  Layer: The name of the DXF layer. The default layer is "0".
-  PaperSpace: 1 if the entity is located on a layout (paper space),
   NULL otherwise.
-  SubClasses: Where available, a list of classes to which an entity
   belongs.
-  ExtendedEntity (GDAL <= 2.2.x): The values of extended entity
   attributes all appended to form a single text field, where available.
-  RawCodeValues (GDAL >= 2.3.0): Only available when the configuration
   option DXF_INCLUDE_RAW_CODE_VALUES is set to TRUE. A string list
   containing all group codes and values that are not handled by the DXF
   reader.
-  Linetype: Where available, the line type used for this entity.
-  EntityHandle: The hexadecimal entity handle. A sort of feature id.
-  Text: The text of labels.

Driver capabilities
-------------------

.. supports_create::

.. supports_virtualio::

Supported Entities
------------------

The following entity types are supported:

-  POINT: Produces a simple POINT geometry feature.
-  MTEXT, TEXT: Produces a POINT feature with LABEL style information.
   The style string may include the following parameters: f s t a c w p
   dx dy bo it. Text positioning might not precisely match CAD software
   (especially the vertical alignment of MTEXT), as calculation of the
   exact position would require GDAL to be aware of the font metrics.
   By default, character escapes such as %%p are honored where
   applicable, and MTEXT control sequences like \\Wx.xx; are stripped.
   To disable this behavior and retrieve the raw text values, set the
   configuration option DXF_TRANSLATE_ESCAPE_SEQUENCES to FALSE.
-  LINE, POLYLINE, LWPOLYLINE: Translated as a LINESTRING. Rounded
   polylines (those with their vertices' bulge attributes set) will be
   tessellated. Single-vertex polylines are translated to POINT.
   Polyface meshes are translated as POLYHEDRALSURFACE geometries.
-  MLINE:

   -  (GDAL >= 2.3.0) Translated as a MULTILINESTRING. Only the geometry
      is reconstructed; styling applied to individual line elements
      within the MLINE is ignored. Fill colors and start/end caps are
      also omitted.
   -  (GDAL <= 2.2.x) No support.

-  CIRCLE, ELLIPSE, ARC, SPLINE, (GDAL >= 2.3.0) HELIX: Translated as a
   LINESTRING, tessellating the curve into line segments.
   (GDAL >= 2.3.0) CIRCLEs with nonzero "thickness" (cylinders) are
   approximated as a POLYHEDRALSURFACE.
-  INSERT: By default, the block definition referenced by the INSERT
   will be inserted as a compound geometry (for example, a
   MULTILINESTRING for a block containing many lines, or a
   GEOMETRYCOLLECTION for a block that contains points and lines). If
   the block contains TEXT or MTEXT entities, they are not merged into
   the compound geometry and are instead returned as separate features.

   Three configuration options are available to control the behavior of
   INSERT entities:

   -  DXF_MERGE_BLOCK_GEOMETRIES: To avoid merging blocks into a
      compound geometry the DXF_MERGE_BLOCK_GEOMETRIES config option may
      be set to FALSE. Use this option if you need to preserve the
      styling (such as colors) of individual linework entities within
      the block.
   -  DXF_INLINE_BLOCKS: See below.
   -  (GDAL >= 2.3.0) DXF_FEATURE_LIMIT_PER_BLOCK: Maximum number of
      features inserted from a single block. Set to -1 for no limit.
      Defaults to 10000.

-  ATTDEF, ATTRIB:

   -  (GDAL >= 2.3.0) Attributes (ATTRIB) are treated as TEXT entities,
      and attribute definitions (ATTDEF) inside blocks are ignored. The
      behavior is different when DXF_INLINE_BLOCKS is false (see below).
   -  (GDAL <= 2.2.x) ATTDEF entities are treated as TEXT. ATTRIB
      entities are not supported.

-  HATCH: Line and arc boundaries are collected as a polygon geometry,
   but no effort is currently made to represent the fill style of HATCH
   entities.

   (GDAL >= 2.3.0) The DXF_HATCH_TOLERANCE config option determines the
   tolerance used when looking for the next component to add to the
   hatch boundary.

   (GDAL <= 2.2.x) Only line and polyline boundary paths are translated
   correctly.

-  3DFACE, SOLID, (GDAL >= 2.3.0) TRACE: Translated as POLYGON, except
   for SOLID and TRACE entities with only one distinct vertex
   (translated as POINT) or two distinct vertices (translated as
   LINESTRING).
-  DIMENSION:

   -  (GDAL >= 2.3.0) The DXF format allows each DIMENSION entity to
      reference an "anonymous" block (a block whose name starts with
      \*D) that contains the geometry of the DIMENSION. If present, this
      anonymous block will be inlined at the required position.
      Otherwise, fallback will occur to a simple DIMENSION renderer that
      explodes a linear dimension as a MULTILINESTRING feature.
      Arrowheads, if present, are translated as one or more additional
      features. The fallback renderer will render nonlinear dimensions
      as if they were linear.
   -  (GDAL <= 2.2.x) Dimensions are translated as a MULTILINESTRING and
      a POINT for the text.

-  LEADER, MULTILEADER:

   -  (GDAL >= 2.3.0) The leader line is translated as a LINESTRING
      (LEADER) or MULTILINESTRING (MULTILEADER). Arrowheads, if present,
      are translated as one or more additional features. Text for
      MULTILEADER entities is translated into a POINT feature with a
      label. Block content for MULTILEADERS is treated as for INSERT.
      Spline leaders are tessellated into line segments.
   -  (GDAL <= 2.2.x) No support.

-  3DSOLID, REGION, SURFACE: See below.

A reasonable attempt is made to preserve color, line width (lineweight),
line type, text size and orientation via OGR feature styling information
when translating entities. Currently no effort is made to preserve
complex line types (those that include text or shapes) or HATCH fill
styles.

The approximation of arcs, ellipses, circles and rounded polylines as
linestrings is done by splitting the arcs into subarcs of no more than a
threshold angle. This angle is set using the OGR_ARC_STEPSIZE
configuration option. This defaults to 4 degrees. You can also set the
OGR_ARC_MAX_GAP configuration option to enforce a maximum distance
between adjacent points on the interpolated curve. Setting this option
to 0 (the default) means no maximum distance applies.

For splines, the interpolated polyline contains eight vertices for each
control point.

Object coordinate systems (OCS), also known as "extrusions", are
supported for all entities to which they apply as per the DXF
specification, except DIMENSION, LEADER and MULTILEADER. These three
entity types also currently lack support for elevations; the geometries
will always be 2D.

DXF_INLINE_BLOCKS
-----------------

The default behavior is for INSERT entities to be exploded with the
geometry of the BLOCK they reference. However, if the DXF_INLINE_BLOCKS
configuration option is set to the value FALSE, then the behavior is
different as described here.

-  A new layer will be available called "blocks". It will contain one or
   more features for each BLOCK defined in the file. In addition to the
   usual fields, they will also have a Block field indicating what block
   they are part of. (Note, in GDAL 2.2.x and earlier this field was
   called BlockName.)
-  (GDAL >= 2.3.0) ATTDEF entities in the blocks layer will have an
   AttributeTag field, giving the tag of the ATTDEF entity.
-  The entities layer will have several new fields:

   -  BlockName: The name of the referenced block.
   -  BlockScale: The X, Y, and Z scale factors.
   -  BlockAngle: The angle of the block in degrees.
   -  BlockOCSNormal (GDAL >= 2.3.0): The unit normal vector of the
      object coordinate system (OCS) of the INSERT entity.
   -  BlockOCSCoords (GDAL >= 2.3.0): The OCS coordinates of the
      insertion point.
   -  BlockAttributes (GDAL >= 2.3.0): The text content of attributes
      associated with this block. Each entry in this string list
      contains an attribute tag, followed by a space, followed by the
      text for that attribute (which may be empty).

-  INSERT entities will populate these new fields with the corresponding
   information (they are null for all other entities).
-  INSERT entities will not have block geometry inlined - instead they
   will have a POINT geometry for the insertion point.

The intention is that with DXF_INLINE_BLOCKS disabled, the block
references will remain as references and the original block definitions
will be available via the blocks layer. On export this configuration
will result in the creation of similar blocks.

3D Extensibility
----------------

DXF files may contain 3DSOLID, REGION and SURFACE entities, which
contain 3D modelling data in the undocumented Autodesk ShapeModeler
(ASM) format. GDAL cannot transform these entities into OGR geometries,
so they are skipped by default.

Starting from GDAL 2.3.0, the DXF_3D_EXTENSIBLE_MODE configuration
option may be set to TRUE to include these entities with the raw ASM
data stored in a field. This option will add two new fields:

-  ASMData: A binary field that contains the ASM data.
-  ASMTransform: A list of 12 real values indicating the affine
   transformation to be applied to the entity.

This feature only works for DXF files in AutoCAD 2013 (AC1027) format
and later.

Character Encodings
-------------------

Normally DXF files are in the ANSI_1252 / Win1252 encoding. GDAL/OGR
attempts to translate this to UTF-8 when reading and back into ANSI_1252
when writing. DXF files can also have a header field ($DWGCODEPAGE)
indicating the encoding of the file. In GDAL 1.8.x and earlier this was
ignored but from GDAL 1.9.0 and later an attempt is made to use this to
recode other code pages to UTF-8. Whether this works will depend on the
code page naming and whether GDAL/OGR is built against the iconv library
for character recoding.

In some cases the $DWGCODEPAGE setting in a DXF file will be wrong, or
unrecognised by OGR. It could be edited manually, or the DXF_ENCODING
configuration variable can be used to override what id will be used by
OGR in transcoding. The value of DXF_ENCODING should be an encoding name
supported by CPLRecode() (i.e. an iconv name), not a DXF $DWGCODEPAGE
name. Using a DXF_ENCODING name of "UTF-8" will avoid any attempt to
recode the text as it is read.

--------------

Creation Issues
---------------

DXF files are written in AutoCAD 2004 format. A standard header
(everything up to the ENTITIES keyword) is written from the
$GDAL_DATA/header.dxf file, and the $GDAL_DATA/trailer.dxf file is added
after the entities. Only one OGR layer can be used to create the output
file (but many DXF layers can be created - see below).

-  Point features with LABEL styling are written as MTEXT entities based
   on the styling information.
-  Point features without LABEL styling are written as POINT entities.
-  LineString and MultiLineString features are written as one or more
   LWPOLYLINE entities, closed in the case of polygon rings. If the
   geometry does not have a constant elevation, a POLYLINE entity is
   written. An effort is made to preserve line width and color.
-  Polygon, Triangle and MultiPolygon features are written as HATCH
   entities by default. To write these features as LWPOLYLINE/POLYLINE
   entities instead, set the configuration option DXF_WRITE_HATCH to
   FALSE. You may need to do this if your geometries do not have a
   constant elevation, as the DXF HATCH entity cannot represent such
   geometries.

Only the first tool (PEN, BRUSH, etc) in the style string is read. The
following style string parameters are understood:

.. list-table::
   :header-rows: 1

   * - Tool
     - Available on geometry types
     - Supported parameters
   * - PEN
     - Point, (Multi)LineString
     - color (c); width (w); dash pattern (p)
   * - BRUSH
     - (Multi)Polygon, Triangle
     - foreground color (fc)
   * - SYMBOL
     - Point
     - color (c)
   * - LABEL
     - Point
     - | GDAL >= 2.3.0: text (t); font name (f); font size (s), treated as cap
       | height; bold (bo); italic (it); text color (c); x and y offsets (dx,
       | dy); angle (a); anchor point (p); stretch (w)
       | GDAL <= 2.2.x: text (t); font size (s), treated as cap height; text
       | color (c); angle (a); anchor point (p)

The dataset creation supports the following dataset creation options:

-  **HEADER=**\ *filename*: Override the header file used - in place of
   header.dxf located in the GDAL_DATA directory.
-  **TRAILER=**\ *filename*: Override the trailer file used - in place
   of trailer.dxf located in the GDAL_DATA directory.

Note that in GDAL 1.8 and later, the header and trailer templates can be
complete DXF files. The driver will scan them and only extract the
needed portions (portion before or after the ENTITIES section).

Block References
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is possible to export a "blocks" layer to DXF in addition to the
"entities" layer in order to produce actual DXF BLOCKs definitions in
the output file. It is also possible to write INSERT entities if a block
name is provided for an entity. To make this work the following
conditions apply:

-  A "blocks" layer may be created, and it must be created before the
   entities layer.
-  The entities in the blocks layer should have the Block field
   populated. (Note, in GDAL 2.2.x and earlier this attribute was called
   BlockName.)
-  Objects to be written as INSERTs in the entities layer should have a
   POINT geometry, and the BlockName field set. You may also set
   BlockAngle, BlockScale, BlockOCSNormal and BlockOCSCoords (see above
   under DXF_INLINE_BLOCKS for details). If BlockOCSCoords is set to a
   list of 3 real numbers, it is used as the location of the block; in
   this situation the position of the POINT geometry is ignored.
-  If a block (name) is already defined in the template header, that
   will be used regardless of whether a new definition was provided in
   the blocks layer.

The intention is that a simple translation from DXF to DXF with
DXF_INLINE_BLOCKS set to FALSE will approximately reproduce the original
blocks and keep INSERT entities as INSERT entities rather than exploding
them.

Layer Definitions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When writing entities, if populated the Layer field is used to set the
written entities layer. If the layer is not already defined in the
template header then a new layer definition will be introduced, copied
from the definition of the default layer ("0").

Linetype Definitions

When writing linestring geometries, the following rules apply with
regard to linetype (dash pattern) definitions.

-  If the Linetype field is set on a written feature, and that linetype
   is already defined in the template header, then it will be referenced
   from the entity. If a style string is present with a "p" pattern
   proportional to the linetype defined in the header, a linetype scale
   value is written.
-  If the Linetype field is set, but the linetype is not defined in the
   header template, then a definition will be added if the feature has
   an OGR style string with a PEN tool and a "p" pattern setting.
-  If the feature has no Linetype field set, but it does have an OGR
   style string with a PEN tool with a "p" pattern set, then an
   automatically named linetype will be created in the output file. Or,
   if an appropriate linetype was previously created, that linetype will
   be referenced, with a linetype scale if required.

The intention is that "dot dash" style patterns will be preserved when
written to DXF and that specific linetypes can be predefined in the
header template, and referenced using the Linetype field if desired.

It is assumed that patterns are using "g" (georeferenced) units for
defining the line pattern. If not, the scaling of the DXF patterns is
likely to be wrong - potentially very wrong.

Units

GDAL writes DXF files with measurement units set to "Imperial - Inches".
If you need to change the units, edit the
`$MEASUREMENT <https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/AutoCAD-Core/files/GUID-1D074C55-0B63-482E-8A37-A52AC0C7C8FE-htm.html>`__
and
`$INSUNITS <https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2018/ENU/AutoCAD-Core/files/GUID-A58A87BB-482B-4042-A00A-EEF55A2B4FD8-htm.html>`__
variables in the header template.

See also

`AutoCAD 2000 DXF
Reference <http://www.autodesk.com/techpubs/autocad/acad2000/dxf/>`__

`AutoCAD 2014 DXF
Reference <http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/autocad_2014_pdf_dxf_reference_enu.pdf>`__

`DXF header
reference <http://www.autodesk.com/techpubs/autocad/acad2000/dxf/header_section_group_codes_dxf_02.htm>`__
