DXF data format

[bpeirson]

How is data formatted in DXF. I have viewed a file in notepad and I would like to know how to distinguish various lines and line types.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[roberttx]

Hi, bpeirson,

The DXF format follows a certain format for lines as shown,

LINE
5
20
100
AcDbEntity
8
0
100
AcDbLine
10
3.634743
20
2.447211
30
0.0
11
11.42476
21
5.082669
31
0.0
0

10,20 & 30 stand for x,y & z for first endpoint, whereas 11, 21 & 31 stand for x,y & z for second endpoint. For more information, go to to Help, and look for DXF File structure (at least in r14)

Hope that helps,
Roberttx

 

[elev8848]

See
VBA for autoCad 2002
"writing autoCad macros"
by Jefffrey E. Clark
ISBN 0-13-065201-6

I am quoting a paragraph for you..
"The DXF format is fundamentally simple. Each line or record consists of two elements, a GROUP CODE and its DESCRIPTION. the group code is always an integer indicating what kind of data element follows. The description may be an integer, a floatingpoint number, or a string, depending upon the kind of data it represents, The most elementary group code is zero, whose description is always a string indicating the entity type, the section or the endo of a section within a DXF file, or the end of the file...." and it goes on with example:

0
SECTION
2
HEADER
...
...
0
ENDSEC
...
...
0
EOF

"The first two lines 0 SECTION, mark the beginneing of a section fo the file, in this case the header section as denoted by 2 HEADER, which follows immediately. The first ellipsis indicates other entity pairs that follow, until we come to 0 ENDSEC, which marks the end of that section. After the second ellipsis, which indiates other sections, we finally come to 0 EOF, which tells us we are at the end of the file.

There are four main sections to the DXF format:
HEADER, TABLES, BLOCKS, ENTITIES..."

I learnt by creating a simple dxf file with some lines and texts. Then modifying some of the contents such as the texts using notepad- and see what happends to the drawing in AutoCAd.

 

[lpseifert]

Help >> Developer Help >> DXF Reference

____________________
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