AutoCAD® 2012 FOR DUMMIES®

The Importance of Being DWG

To take full advantage of AutoCAD in your work environment, you need to be aware of the DWG file format, the format in which AutoCAD saves drawings. Here are some DWG facts to keep in mind:

• In some cases, an older release of AutoCAD can't open a DWG file that's been saved by a newer AutoCAD release.
• A newer release of AutoCAD can always open files saved by older versions.
• Some previous AutoCAD releases can open files saved by the subsequent one or two versions. For example, AutoCAD 2007 and AutoCAD 2008 can open DWG files saved by AutoCAD 2009. That's because Autodesk didn't change the DWG file format between those releases. However, the drawing file format did change with AutoCAD 2010, so drawings created in the current release must be saved in an older format to be openable in AutoCAD 2009 and earlier.
• You can use the Save As option in newer releases to save the file to some older DWG formats. In fact, AutoCAD 2012 can save as far back as AutoCAD Release 14, which dates all the way back to 1997!

Table 1-1 shows which versions (described later in this chapter) use which DWG file formats.

Table 1-1 AutoCAD Versions and DWG File Formats

The new file format introduced in AutoCAD 2010 was necessary to handle new features — especially parametric drafting, and that format proved more efficient at saving files and handling much larger objects. Best of all, ...