DraftSight File Types

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In today’s blog, we will talk about the different File Types associated with DraftSight Professional, what they are and what you can do with them!

The three supported drawing file formats are:

  • DWG – Everyone in the CAD world knows about DWG files. Practically every modern CAD system supports the format.
  • DXF – Before DWG was supported by the majority of CAD systems, DXF was the means to share files with other, Non DWG compatible CAD systems.
  • DGN – A competitor to the DWG File Format from Bentley Systems, which, as of DraftSight 2017, you can now import into DraftSight Professional.

OK, so you probably all knew those file types, now we’ll get to the lesser known ones!

  • BAK – Every time you save your file in DraftSight Professional, a backup file is created.  This is the previously saved version of the file. The BAK file will be saved in the same location as your DWG file. If you need to, you can rename the BAK file to DWG and open it in DraftSight Professional.
  • DS$ – DraftSight Professional will do an Auto-Save of your work at a specified number of minutes after you last saved. So, should your PC crash for whatever reason, you can locate the latest DS$ and rename it to DWG file and carry on working, hopefully only suffering from minimal drawing time lost.
  • LSP – Lisp is a programming language used in DraftSight Professional and other CAD systems.  It allows the user to create applications to run inside DraftSight Professional.
  • SCR – Script files allow the user to automate a sequence of commands within DraftSight Professional. Script files can be created in any Word Processor that can save to the ASCII text format such as Notepad in Windows.
  • MNU – If you don’t like the DraftSight Professional default menu, you can, if you wish, edit it. To do this, you need to open the MNU file in Notepad or its equivalent. You can change position of commands, group common commands together, even add in new commands for Lisp routines.

Those would be the main File Types you will come across in DraftSight Professional.  With reference to the BAK and DS$, we have previously written abut them and how to configure the Auto-Save function.  You can check that blog out here. We have also blogged about Lisp support in DraftSight Professional and you can check that blog out here.

As always, the DraftSight Professional Help file has an abundance of information on the file types. We’d suggest browsing through it for more information.

DraftSight 2017 SP2 was recently released for download.  Just click the link here.  The full list of improvements can be viewed here.

To purchase DraftSight Professional, click here.

Discover more about DraftSight and how you can boost your productivity with DraftSight Professional, a powerful 2D design solution for professionals that includes productivity tools and an API for just $99.

DraftSight.com/Professional

MJ Smyth

MJ Smyth

The first time I used CAD, it was on a DOS PC with an 8088 processor, 640K of memory and a Hercules Mono Graphics Card... That, well that was a long long time ago. I switched to DraftSight the day it was released and haven't looked back!
MJ Smyth

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