The ASCII Drawing Interchange file format reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

ASCII Drawing Interchange file format

Standard ASCII text files used in CAD products such as AutoCAD to store vector data. Uses the extension .DXF.

The basic organization of a AutoCAD DXF file is as follows:

• HEADER section - General information about the drawing. Each parameter has a variable name and an associated value.
• TABLES section - This section contains definitions of named items.

Linetype (LTYPE) table

Layer table

Text style (STYLE) table

View table

User Coordinate System (UCS) table

Viewport configuration (VPORT) table

• BLOCKS section - This section contains Block Definition entities describing the entities comprising each Block in the drawing.
• ENTITIES section - This section contains the drawing entities, including any Block References.
• END OF FILE

online-documentations of several DXF-versions:

• AutoCAD 2004 (PDF)
• AutoCAD 2002 (PDF)
• AutoCAD 2000
• AutoCAD 14

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