DXF Viewer

• Check a .dxf drawing: laser-cutter templates, CNC profiles, CAD exchange files, without firing up a CAD package.

DXF is how CAD drawings move between people who do not share software. A fabricator sends one, an architect emails another, and if you do not have a CAD licence on your Mac you have no way to look at either.

DXF Viewer opens them as drawings, not as 3D models. Everything renders on a white paper canvas with hairline strokes, the way a drawing is supposed to look, with pan and zoom and the ability to toggle individual layers on and off. Thumbnails and Quick Look work in the file browser, so a folder of drawings is identifiable at a glance.

The parser reads ASCII DXF and handles the entities real drawings actually contain: lines, lightweight polylines including bulge arcs, polylines, circles, arcs, ellipses, splines, text and mtext, block inserts and points. It reads the layer table and applies the standard ACI colour palette.

This reads ASCII DXF. Binary DXF and native DWG are out of scope, so if your file will not open, re-export it as DXF from whatever produced it.

Requirements

Universal binary, so it runs on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
• Intel Mac or Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)

Installation

Download the file, unzip it, and copy it into your Applications folder. Open it once and it registers the Quick Look handler itself. Instructions are included with the download.

Apps downloaded here are signed by Apple, so you shouldn't see any Gatekeeper warnings.

Licence

What you may do: install and use the software, at no cost, on any Mac you own or control, for personal or business purposes.

What you may not do: sell, rent, lease, sublicense or otherwise charge anyone for the software; redistribute, repackage, bundle or host it for download (please point people at the official download page instead); or modify, adapt, translate, reverse-engineer, decompile or disassemble it, except to the limited extent applicable law expressly permits.

The software is licensed, not sold. All rights not expressly granted above are reserved by the copyright holder, who may offer future or paid versions under different terms.

Privacy

100% on-device. No accounts, no tracking, never connects to the internet, collects no data whatsoever.

Feedback

Please contact me with any feedback, issues, suggestions or requests!