Architects and survey firms commonly use general-purpose CAD software called AutoCAD to create design work for their discipline. You may well want to use an AutoCAD drawing by other professionals that you hope to use as a base plan to create your landscape design. AutoCAD drawing files have the extension .dwg, and converting an AutoCAD dwg file to a format that will load in gCADPlus can be difficult. To do this, we recommend using a free file conversion tool called ODA converter, produced by a group called the Open Design Alliance. The ODA tool can be set up to convert dwg to a binary form of an exchange format called DXF. Once that’s done, the DXF file can be imported into the gCADPlus drawing environment.
This movie shows the ODA File Converter in action. We set input and export criteria in the ODA tool and run it to process a complex AutoCAD drawing (in dwg format) into a binary DXF file ready for gCADPlus. The binary DXF is a very efficient file format, and the file size is often 50% less than that of a corresponding ASCII DXF file.
Here is a link to download a copy of the ODA converter.
And a link to more information on dwg files.