How to convert a DWG file to PDF properly

There is more than one way to turn a DWG into a PDF, and they do not all give the same result. A screenshot is technically a conversion too — until you zoom in. Below is both the quick route and what to check so the output is something you can actually hand over.

The quick route: in the browser

1. Drag your DWG or DXF onto the drawing view. The file opens in your browser; only a DWG needs a round trip to the server, and it is deleted once the job finishes.
2. Turn off the layers you do not want in the output — furniture, grid annotation, reference underlays.
3. Choose the scale. 1:50 for a unit plan, 1:100 for a floor plan are the usual figures.
4. If you only need part of the sheet, mark it with Select area.
5. Hit Get PDF. The output is produced as vector geometry.

Three checks before you send it

1. Is the scale genuinely right?

Open the PDF in a viewer with a measure tool and check a distance you know: a grid spacing, a door opening, a column. At 1:50, a 5 m grid spacing must measure 10 cm on paper. If it does not, the drawing's units — metres against millimetres — were read wrongly.

2. Did the text survive?

MTEXT is what usually goes missing: multi-line text collapses to one line, the column width is ignored, bold and italic runs are dropped. Check the project name in the title block and the grid bubbles — a grid letter sitting centred inside its circle is a good sign that text placement worked.

3. Hatches and line types

Concrete, insulation and floor hatches should come out filled. An empty box means the converter skipped the HATCH pattern. In the same way, a centre line (dash-dot) and a hidden line (dashed) must still be distinguishable. If everything became solid, the LTYPE information was lost.

Sheet size and very large drawings

The PDF format limits a single page to 200 × 200 inches, roughly 5 × 5 metres. A large floor plan at 1:50 can run into that. When it does, either drop the scale to 1:100 or split the sheet; exporting area by area is usually the most practical answer.

Which DWG versions

Files written by any AutoCAD from R12 onwards can be read. The version the file was saved in does not matter; unreadable files are recovered by stepping down the version ladder. There is more on that in DWG files that refuse to open.