DXF is the file a draftsperson can actually open. Draftie will take a sketch, a photo or a PDF, turn it into real geometry, and give you that geometry as a layered DXF in millimetres.
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Step 01
Scan a sketch, photo or PDF, or draw the plan from scratch with your lot dimensions.
Step 02
Walls closed, openings in the right walls, rooms typed. What exports is what the model says, so this is the step that matters.
Step 03
One file, five layers, millimetre coordinates. It opens in AutoCAD, BricsCAD, DraftSight, LibreCAD and anything else that reads DXF.
Most consumer floor plan tools do not export DXF at all. They will give you a PNG, a PDF, or their own proprietary project file, and the moment a professional needs to work on your plan, all of that is a dead end: they redraw it from scratch and bill you for the hour.
A DXF is not a picture of a plan. It is the lines, at coordinates, on layers, in real units. Handing one over means the person doing your documentation starts from your geometry instead of starting again.
Five layers, named to the convention CAD offices already use, so nothing needs renaming on import. Units are set to millimetres in the file header, and coordinates are real: a 3,600mm room measures 3,600 units.
| Layer | Contents | Colour |
|---|---|---|
| A-WALL | Wall faces, split around every opening | 7: white/black |
| A-DOOR | Door jambs, leaf and swing arc | 3: green |
| A-GLAZ | Window jambs and glazing lines | 4: cyan |
| A-FURN | Furniture outlines, where placed | 8: grey |
| A-ANNO | Room names and room areas in m² | 2: yellow |
Worth knowing before you open it and go looking, because these are omissions rather than bugs.
Room boundaries are not a closed polygon on their own layer: rooms are described by the walls that enclose them, plus a name and an area as text on A-ANNO. If your workflow needs hatchable room polygons, you will be drawing them.
There is no title block, no sheet setup and no dimension entities. Draftie draws dimensions on screen and on the PDF, but the DXF ships geometry rather than annotation, on the assumption that whoever opens it dimensions to their own office standard anyway.
It is 2D. There are no solids, no wall types, no material data and nothing a BIM tool would recognise as an object. Revit will import it as linework to trace over, which is the normal way a concept plan enters a BIM workflow.
The DXF is for the person drawing the documentation. The PDF is for everyone else, and it is a different job.
It prints A3 landscape at 1:100, genuinely to scale, a 90mm wall measures 0.9mm on the sheet, so anyone can put a scale rule on it and get a real number. Under the plan sits a flooring schedule: one row per flooring product actually specified, with the brand, the range, the colour, the SKU, which rooms it covers and the total area. That is the page a builder prices from.
PNG and SVG come out too, for a listing, an email or a slide.
The realistic use here is intake. A client arrives with a sketch or a PDF and a rough idea. Rather than spending the first hour redrawing their existing house, run it through Draftie, get the DXF, and start from geometry.
The plan checks are worth knowing about too. Draftie tests room widths, circulation, door clearances and garage sizing against NCC and Queensland Development Code rules and against the setbacks you enter, so the obvious problems surface during the concept conversation rather than after you have documented them.
To be clear about the boundary: this does not do your job and is not trying to. It removes the retracing, and it means the concept you are handed has already had its minimum widths checked.
Client intake without the retrace. A DXF with millimetre coordinates on conventional layers, ready to document from.
You need to hand something to a draftsperson and you would rather not pay for the hour it takes them to redraw your PDF.
A PDF, a photo or a sketch that has to become CAD geometry, in one step rather than three.
No, DXF only. DXF is the published interchange format and every CAD package reads it, including AutoCAD, so in practice this is not a limitation.
Millimetres, set in the file header, with real coordinates. A 3,600mm room is 3,600 units. Nothing needs rescaling on import.
A-WALL, A-DOOR, A-GLAZ, A-FURN and A-ANNO, the conventional CAD naming, so they slot into an existing office standard without renaming.
No. Rooms are described by the walls enclosing them, with the name and area as text on A-ANNO. If you need hatchable room polygons you will need to draw them.
Not as DXF dimension entities. Dimensions appear on screen and on the exported PDF, but the DXF carries geometry rather than annotation: most offices dimension to their own standard regardless.
Yes, and it is a common path: upload the PDF, confirm the scale, check the geometry, export the DXF. The middle step is not skippable, because exporting geometry nobody has looked at is how a wrong plan ends up in someone’s CAD file.
As 2D linework to trace or model over, yes, which is the normal way a concept plan enters a BIM workflow. It does not arrive as walls, because a DXF has no concept of a wall object.
It is good enough to document from, not to submit as documentation. Draftie produces concept plans: the DXF is the starting geometry for a draftsperson, which saves the redraw and not the drafting.
Scan the plan, check the geometry, export the DXF. Your draftsperson starts from your drawing instead of from scratch.
Export a DXF, freeDraftie produces concept plans, not construction documents, and its plan checks are advisory rather than a compliance certificate. Product specifications change, confirm current details with the manufacturer before relying on them.