Drop any file to identify it
No upload. No signup. No sending your file halfway across the internet.
We tell you what it is, right here in your browser.
Drop it!
Let go to identify this file.
Couldn't identify this file
Need to convert it? fwip it →
DWF (Design Web Format) is Autodesk's answer to a simple question: how do you share a CAD drawing with someone who doesn't have CAD software and shouldn't be editing it anyway? It's the PDF of the engineering world — a compressed, view-only format that preserves the visual fidelity of the original drawing without exposing the parametric model.
The format stores 2D drawings and 3D models in a compressed package (actually a ZIP archive containing W2D or W3D streams). It supports layers, section views, markup, and print-accurate geometry. DWFx, the newer variant, uses the XML Paper Specification (XPS) as its container format for better integration with Windows. File sizes are typically 1/20th of the original DWG.
DWF was designed for design review workflows — a structural engineer sends a DWF to a project manager, who can view, measure, and annotate it without needing AutoCAD. Autodesk offers a free viewer (Autodesk Viewer), and DWF files can be embedded in web pages. It's less popular than simply exporting to PDF, but for 3D review workflows it preserves information that PDF can't represent.