Well, this might be a relatively uncommon file name that few of us had to encounter or come across. So, what does this type of file format stand for? The files with the extension .dwg are related to the drawing software. The full form of dwg is drawing. These files are actually associated with the AutoCAD program from the Autodesk Inc. The .dwg files are primarily related to the two-dimensional and three-dimensional drawing structures which can be created with the AutoCAD program. This is profession CAD program, which can be used to view and access the contents of the files. Technically, the program contains the vector image data and the metadata of the file.
How does this file format come to use?
For the Windows operating system, the free Autodesk DWG True View Program helps to view the .dwg files. The contents of the files with the DWG .dwg are in the form of the .DXF format. This DXF format is an ASCII version of the .dwg file extension. The .dwg files are basically in the form of the binary format files. These are used to save and store the data and metadata structures.
These files with the DWG .dwg are the native files for a number of packages of the CAD program. Some of these are Draft Sight, IntelliCAD, Caddie and the most common one in use i.e. AutoCAD. There are other file formats also which are non-natively supported with the files of the .dwg extension. For example, the .bak files (which are used for the backing up of the drawings), the .dws files (which set the drawing standards), .dwt (the templates used for drawing) and .sv$ (temporarily saved files) are also the various types of .dwg files.
The latest CAD program to open, access and modify the DWG .dwg files was launched in 2013 as DWG 2013. The internal version of the same is of the type AC1027. These are used in the AutoCAD 2013 and AutoCAD 214 by the system. The Autodesk provides for zero-cost software to access the .dwg extension files. It is done through the Autodesk DWG True View software which also comes with the DWG True Convert software. Other applications which use the .dwg files are 2D Graphic, BravoDraft, Drafix Drawing, the Older Generic CADD Drawing format and the Pro/Engineer (drawing program) by PTC.
Open DWG File on Windows OS
- Look for an DWG file you need to open in Windows Explorer and double-click on it
- If the file doesn’t open automatically and you see a “Windows can’t open a file” message then you should search for a program which can open DWG file
- If you have a program which can open DWG file installed on your computer then launch that program and select “File” and then “Open” or similar options from its menu to open the DWG file
- If you don’t have the program installed then you need to try searching for “DWG wiki”, “how to open DWG file” in the search engine.
- Once you find the application, install it on your computer
- After the program is installed double-click on the DWG file to open it
File extensions are used by Windows operating system to specify what kind of information is stored in the file. Every file in Windows OS needs to have file extension and file extensions are used by Windows to determine which application it should use to open the file. Every application installed on Windows OS places information about which extensions it could open into the Windows registry and Windows uses this information to determine which application it should launch when user double-clicks on the file. If application which can open DWG file is not installed, then Windows will show ‘Windows can’t open DWG file’ message and buttons to either select an application on the computer which can open the file or to search the web for the application which can open DWG file.