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How Do I Read a 2D CAD File On My Mac?

Hi Gary, my name is Massimo and I come from Italy, I have just bought my first Mac after over 20 years as windows user and I would like to thank you for your youtube channel, it’s been and it is, very helpful to quickly learn and handle this big change, anyway I am incredible happy to be a Mac user :)

In my business, I often need to open AutoCAD files as dwg or dxf, just for reading and take few measure sometimes, of course there are a ton of app, but basically I do not need an high level CAD (I am not a designer, I do not need to buy an Autodesk license) so, I would like to ask if you have any suggestion for a good and especially safe application for this purpose. In the apple store I did not find a very interesting app, while I found many ones downloadable by the web, that’s why I pointed out about the safeness….

I am not sure if I post this question in the right place, so let me apologize in case it’s not a right question for your forum.
Once again thanks
Best Rgds
Massimo
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Massimo

Comments: One Response to “How Do I Read a 2D CAD File On My Mac?”

    5 years ago

    You can find apps to handle files by their file extension. Launch the Mac App Store and then do a search like "extension:dxf." This will return all the apps in the store that list themselves as handling that file type.

    You can also Control+click on a file, then go to Open With, and then to App Store at the bottom of that menu.

    I'm not sure what you need in order to work with these files since I don't use them. But I would definitely only download one that you have thoroughly researched and also make sure you are downloading it from the real developer's site, not some third-party site. That is so important!

    What app did you use to do this sort of work in Windows? Does the company simply have a Mac version you can get? If not, are there online forums for the users of this app. Perhaps you can ask there for recommendations as many people may use both Windows and Mac.

    You also always have the option to use Boot Camp or a VM (like Parallels) to simply run your Windows software on your Mac.

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