GNU LibreDWG is a free C library to handle DWG files. It aims to be a free replacement for the OpenDWG libraries. DWG is the native file format of AutoCAD.

LibreDWG is based on LibDWG, originally written by Felipe Castro.

LibreDWG is in beta development stage. Not all planned features are yet completed, but the API should stay mostly stable. At the moment our decoder (i.e. reader) is done, just some very advanced R2010+ entities fail to read and are skipped over. The writer is good enough for R1.1 - R2000. Among the example applications we wrote using LibreDWG is a reader (from dwg, dxf, json), a writer (convert from dwg, dxf, json or add from scratch), a rewriter (i.e. saveas), an initial SVG and Postscript conversion, converters from and to DXF and JSON, dwggrep to search for text, and dwglayer to print the list of layers.

Download

Source code releases are available from the main GNU server (HTTPS,  HTTP,  FTP), or preferably a mirror near you.

Pre-releases for Windows are at GitHub.

Documentation

• The Manual in various formats.
• The Reference manual for the API.
• The DWG specs and the various other specs.

Mailing lists and updates

• <libredwg@gnu.org> is used for discussing most aspects of LibreDWG, including development, enhancement requests and bug reports (subscribe on the web interface).
• info-libredwg is used for announcements.
• News are posted on the news section at Savannah (Atom feed).

Getting involved

Development of LibreDWG, and GNU in general, is a volunteer effort, and you can contribute. For information, please read How to help GNU. If you'd like to get involved, it's a good idea to join the discussion mailing list (see above). If you want to contribute to our project, check the CONTRIBUTING file and the LibreDWG hackers' wiki, with checkout and build instructions, before diving into source code.

Development tools

For development sources, bug and patch trackers, and other information, please see the LibreDWG project page at savannah.gnu.org.

There are actively maintained mirrors of the Savannah repository at GitLab and GitHub.

Test releases

Trying the latest test release (when available) is always appreciated. Test releases of LibreDWG can be found on the GNU “alpha” server (HTTPS,  HTTP,  FTP).

Daily snaphots of all updates to master and binaries for Windows are at GitHub.

Maintainers

GNU LibreDWG is currently maintained by Reini Urban. The former maintainers were Rodrigo Rodrigues da Silva and Felipe Correa da Silva Sanches. Please use <libredwg@gnu.org> for contact.

Licensing

LibreDWG is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.