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About DXF
DXF stands for Drawing eXchange Format. It was developed by Autodesk® to facilitate exchange of CAD drawings between different versions of AutoCAD and other CAD/CAM/CNC systems. Since it was first introduced, the CAD industry has adopted it as a universal standard - most engineering applications can read DXF files. Read more in Wikipedia.
The DXF output that pdf2cad generates is compliant with the AutoCAD 2000 version of the DXF reference (AC1015). This means that AutoCAD 2000 and newer releases will correctly render our DXF output. Unfortunately, it may not be compatible with older versions of AutoCAD. Other major CAD applications that have been reported, but not certified directly by Visual Integrity, to support our DXF output include Microstation®, UniGraphics® and Delcam® (PowerShape® and ArtCAM®).
DXF output from pdf2cad reproduces the vector graphics and text strings from the original PDF. Embedded raster images are saved as separate TIFF (black & white) or JPEG (color) image files and are placed by reference in the DXF output.
Please note that there are differences in how the source CAD program and PDF may define the same objects.
pdf2cad can only interpret objects as they are defined in the PDF file. For example, because PDF does not have a circle object, pdf2cad will always represent circles using curves or polyline segments. If a spline is represented by polylines in the PDF file, pdf2cad will also generate it as polylines in the DXF file.
If text is outlined to vector paths in the PDF file or a file uses a non-standard font encoding, pdf2cad will render it as vectors in the DXF instead of as text.