KOMPAS (ASCON) format: Russian CAD standard ESKD — OSM export for import substitution

KOMPAS is the family of CAD products by ASCON, a Saint Petersburg software company that has been the flagship of Russian mechanical CAD since 1989. Unlike AutoCAD or SolidWorks, KOMPAS is built natively around ESKD — the Unified System for Design Documentation, a Soviet/Russian body of GOST standards governing engineering drawing layout. That means title blocks, drawing frames, fonts, weld symbols, surface roughness, datums, and form tolerances in KOMPAS comply with GOST 2.104, GOST 2.305, GOST 2.309 out of the box — no plugins, no custom blocks, no manual setup. After 2022, when Western CAD vendors began withdrawing from the Russian market, KOMPAS became the de facto import substitution standard for defense plants, Rosatom, aerospace design bureaus, and machine-building factories. On osm2cdr.ru, the "KOMPAS" export is specifically tuned DXF v2010 (AC1024) with UTF-8 Cyrillic encoding and metric units, ready to import via File → Open in KOMPAS-Graph and KOMPAS-3D versions 18 and newer.

History: from Lenmetzavod 1989 to import substitution 2026

KOMPAS' story begins in Leningrad in 1989. A young team of engineers, graduates of the Krylov State Research Centre and the Leningrad Metal Plant, founded the cooperative ASCON — "Automated Systems for Design Engineering". The first product, KOMPAS 1.0, an MS-DOS 2D drafting application, was developed under contract with the Leningrad Metal Plant (LMZ), which at the time supplied turbines for the nuclear icebreaker fleet and needed an in-house CAD system after the collapse of Soviet CAD projects. KOMPAS 1.0 ran on IBM PC XT/AT and immediately supported ESKD frames A4-A0, which was rare for the late 1980s even among Western competitors.

In 1995 ASCON spun off its geometric kernel as a separate product called C3D — a native Russian kernel for boolean operations, NURBS surfaces, and parametric constraints. That made ASCON one of four companies worldwide with their own CAD kernel (alongside Parasolid by Siemens, ACIS by Spatial, and Open CASCADE). In 1997 KOMPAS 5.0 shipped — the first Windows release, which moved the entire industry from DOS to GUI. In the 2000s KOMPAS-3D arrived (full solid and surface modeling) alongside vertical applications: KOMPAS-Electric (schematics), KOMPAS-SPDS (architecture and construction), VERTICAL (CAPP — manufacturing process planning), LOTSMAN:PLM (lifecycle management).

The pivot moment came in 2022. After Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, Siemens PLM, and PTC withdrew from the Russian market, KOMPAS became the primary vector for import substitution. By 2024 transition programs had launched at Rosatom, Rostec, UAC (United Aircraft Corporation), USC (shipbuilding), Russian Railways, KAMAZ, AvtoVAZ. By 2026, KOMPAS-3D v22+ covers practically everything SolidWorks 2021 covered — from sheet metal and weldments to FEA simulations through APM FEM and Simlab integration.

What's inside: .frw, .cdw, .m3d, .a3d, .spw

Unlike AutoCAD, KOMPAS has several native extensions by document type:

• .cdw — Drawing (chertezh). A 2D drawing with frame, title block, views, dimensions, technical requirements. A "full-fledged" engineering drawing with a filled-in title block per GOST 2.104.
• .frw — Fragment. 2D geometry without frame or title block — what you embed into a drawing as a reference or library element. Similar to an AutoCAD block but lighter.
• .m3d — Model. A 3D part, a single object for solid modeling.
• .a3d — Assembly. A 3D assembly of multiple .m3d components with mates (sopryazheniya) between them.
• .spw — Specification. A tabular document that auto-collects the assembly's BOM per GOST 2.106 (forms 1 and 1a).

All of these are closed proprietary binary formats. ASCON does not publish the full specification, but provides an API for integration: since 2019, KOMPAS API officially supports Python (through pythonnet and COM), and since KOMPAS-3D v19 there's a REST interface for server scenarios. No open-source writer for .cdw/.frw exists — meaning any external program (including osm2cdr.ru) imports data into KOMPAS through intermediate formats: DXF, DWG, STEP, IGES, SAT.

ESKD and why it matters

ESKD — the Unified System for Design Documentation — is a package of GOST 2.0xx-201x standards describing engineering drawing layout in Russia and the CIS. AutoCAD and SolidWorks out of the box do not know about ESKD — there it's either ANSI (American) or ISO (international) standards. ESKD plugins for AutoCAD exist, but they are always third-party tools from Russian vendors (SPDS GraphiCS, VERTICAL-Technology) requiring separate purchase and support.

KOMPAS, in contrast, is ESKD-native. A4-A0 frames are baked into the .cdw format as first-class objects — not user-defined blocks but a structural schema element. The title block is filled through document properties, and those properties auto-propagate into the .spw specification. GOST type A (italic) and type B (upright) fonts are built-in and mandatory per GOST 2.304. Surface roughness marks, welding symbols, datums, and form tolerances are all first-class objects bound to GOST 2.309 and 2.308.

For Russian government contracts — defense, nuclear, aerospace — ESKD compliance is not an option but a tender requirement. A SolidWorks or AutoCAD drawing will not be accepted until it's re-saved in KOMPAS with a properly filled title block. That is the key reason KOMPAS became the de facto mandatory CAD for Russian industry after 2022.

ASCON ecosystem: not just KOMPAS-3D

ASCON is not one program but a full engineering environment. Beyond the core KOMPAS-Graph and KOMPAS-3D, the product line includes:

• KOMPAS-3D Home — for private users and self-learning, about 3,500 RUB/year.
• KOMPAS-3D Education — free educational license for schools and universities.
• KOMPAS-3D Professional — the main commercial license, base price around 150,000 RUB per module.
• KOMPAS-3D Russian Engineering — expanded bundle with machine-building, metal structures, equipment, and pipeline modules.
• KOMPAS-SPDS — architecture and construction, ESKD + SPDS (Construction Project Documentation System, GOST 21.xxx).
• KOMPAS-Electric — electrical schematic and wiring diagrams.
• VERTICAL — CAPP (Computer-Aided Process Planning), manufacturing process planning with CNC integration.
• LOTSMAN:PLM — engineering data and product lifecycle management, integrates all KOMPAS documents with 1C:ERP and SAP.

The whole ecosystem is built around a shared LOTSMAN storage — meaning that a drawing in .cdw, a 3D model in .m3d, a BOM in .spw, and a process plan from VERTICAL are stored as one linked object with versioning, approvals, and electronic signatures.

KOMPAS-reading software

KOMPAS-3D Professional. Paid, ASCON's main license. About 150,000 RUB for the base module + 30,000-80,000 RUB per extension. Windows. The reference for the format — what KOMPAS-3D writes is by definition a correct .cdw/.m3d. ascon.ru

KOMPAS-3D LT. Free educational version. Windows. Opens all .cdw/.frw/.m3d/.a3d files but disallows commercial use and limits assembly size. Suitable for viewing and learning. Renamed in 2024 to "KOMPAS-3D Educational Edition".

KOMPAS-3D Viewer. Free official viewer from ASCON, Windows. Doesn't edit but opens any .cdw/.frw/.m3d/.a3d, prints, measures. Best choice if you just need to view and print.

nanoCAD SPDS GraphiCS. Paid, around 12,000 RUB/year. Windows. Doesn't open native .cdw but imports via DXF and supports ESKD through a plugin. Used as a bridge between KOMPAS documentation and a nanoCAD environment.

Via DXF/STEP conversion. Any .cdw drawing can be saved out of KOMPAS as DXF/DWG and opened in AutoCAD, BricsCAD, LibreCAD. 3D models .m3d/.a3d export as STEP AP242 for import into SolidWorks, Fusion 360, CATIA, NX. This works one-way only — from KOMPAS outward; the reverse path requires intermediate format cleanup.

Pros and cons

Pros. Full ESKD nativity — frames, title blocks, fonts, GOST symbols out of the box. Russian FSTEC certification and domestic software registry inclusion — mandatory for government and defense tenders. Unified ecosystem KOMPAS + VERTICAL + LOTSMAN — from drawing to lifecycle management without a tool zoo. Import substitution for SolidWorks and AutoCAD has been the de facto standard since 2022. Free educational KOMPAS-3D LT for learning and viewing. First-class Cyrillic — all dialogs, docs, training materials in Russian.

Cons. Closed proprietary format — no open-source writer exists, any external integration goes through DXF/STEP/IGES. Limited English documentation — almost all training content is in Russian, slowing international adoption. Cannot open .cdw in a text editor or diff in git. Compatibility with international CAD is one-way limited: KOMPAS → STEP → SolidWorks works, the reverse loses fidelity. Commercial license price is comparable to AutoCAD ($1700-2000/year), though for import substitution that's an acceptable tradeoff.

KOMPAS vs AutoCAD vs SolidWorks

Comparison matrix: - KOMPAS — Russian ESKD-native, import substitution, mechanical engineering focus. Closed-source, limited English docs. Standard for the Russian industry after 2022. - AutoCAD — universal world standard for 2D drafting and basic 3D. Supports any standard (ANSI/ISO/ESKD) through third-party plugins. Until 2022 was the standard in Russia too. - SolidWorks — parametric solid modeling, mechanical engineering. ANSI/ISO native, ESKD through plugins. Until 2022 was the Russian machine-building standard.

KOMPAS is the choice when work demands ESKD compliance out of the box — government tenders, defense, nuclear, aerospace. AutoCAD for universal 2D and BIM integration via Revit. SolidWorks for complex parametric 3D and mechanical design with international supply chains. After 2022 in Russia the choice effectively collapsed to one — KOMPAS, because Western licenses don't get renewed.

How to build an OSM map for KOMPAS

Our kompas_exporter.py wraps the QGIS DXF writer with KOMPAS-tuned settings: - DXF version 2010 (AC1024) with UTF-8 — Cyrillic labels display correctly starting from KOMPAS-3D v18. - Metric units (millimeters by default for construction drawings, meters for master plans). - Local coordinates with bbox center = origin — KOMPAS dislikes absolute geographic coordinates in DXF. - Standard ACI colors 1-7 for layers, comprehensible to KOMPAS import.

Step 1. Open osm2cdr.ru and pick KOMPAS from the format dropdown (CAD category).

Step 2. Draw the area on the map. For a city basemap under a master plan, 1-3 km² is optimal. For a block or industrial site, 0.3-1 km². For a regional master plan, 5-15 km².

Step 3. Pick a coordinate system. For Russian projects — the appropriate MSK zone (MSK-50 Moscow Region, MSK-77 Moscow, MSK-78 Saint Petersburg, MSK-39 Kaliningrad, etc.). We support 122 Gauss-Kruger zones keyed to MSK numbers, covering 85 numbers: an approximation, not the true MSK of a subject; the parameters of 222 real zones across 75 MSK numbers, each with a named source and confidence class, are computed by the coordinate converter.

Step 4. Style and detail. The cartographic style standard keeps the familiar OSM colors mapped to KOMPAS layer color indices. Detail level 4 of 6 is the optimal balance for a city basemap.

Step 5. Click "Export". The Celery queue processes the job in 30-90 seconds for a medium bbox. Download the DXF and open in KOMPAS via File → Open. KOMPAS will auto-detect DXF v2010 and prompt for an encoding — keep UTF-8.

Get a DXF Map of Moscow for KOMPAS in 60 Seconds

Pitfalls

Not native .cdw, but DXF. Our export writes DXF v2010, not native .cdw. That means you get geometry, layers, and colors, but not the ESKD frame, title block, or filled specification. Those need to be added in KOMPAS manually or imported through the frame library.

MSK zones. If you pick the wrong MSK zone, coordinates will appear strongly offset from the expected district. Verify against the reference: MSK-77 for Moscow, MSK-78 for Saint Petersburg, MSK-66 for Sverdlovsk Region, etc. Full list — in the MSK zone guide.

KOMPAS version. UTF-8 Cyrillic is guaranteed from KOMPAS-3D v18 and newer. For v17 and older the DXF opens but Cyrillic labels may turn into mojibake. Fix — upgrade KOMPAS or export without labels (cartographic style geometry-only).

Defense / Rosatom scale. For classified defense projects, direct import from public OSM sources is forbidden by FSTEC rules. Our export is for commercial, educational, and unclassified design tasks. For classified projects use licensed topographic bases from Roskartografiya.

FAQ

Why DXF and not native .cdw? ASCON does not publish the .cdw spec and provides no open-source SDK for file generation. Any external program imports into KOMPAS via DXF or STEP. That's the standard workflow officially supported by ASCON.

Which KOMPAS version is required? KOMPAS-3D v18 and newer — guaranteed UTF-8 Cyrillic support in DXF. KOMPAS-3D LT (educational) works too. For viewing, the free KOMPAS-3D Viewer is enough.

Are Cyrillic street names preserved? Yes, starting from KOMPAS-3D v18 with DXF v2010 UTF-8 import. KOMPAS will prompt "select encoding" — keep UTF-8 or Auto-detect.

Can I export a 3D model .m3d? No, our kompas_exporter.py only writes 2D geometry to DXF. For 3D OSM buildings use the STEP exporter — STEP AP242 imports into KOMPAS-3D via File → Open.

Does import substitution work through KOMPAS? Yes, after 2022 KOMPAS is in the Russian domestic software registry (reg. #7867) and certified by FSTEC for use in government and defense projects.

Related

• DWG — AutoCAD's native format
• DXF — complete guide
• STEP — 3D model exchange
• KOMPAS-3D: OSM map integration into project
• MSK zones: coordinates for Russia

Sources

• ASCON official site — ascon.ru
• ASCON history — ascon.ru/company/history
• Wikipedia, KOMPAS (CAD) — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KOMPAS
• ESKD GOST 2.104-2006 "Title blocks" — docs.cntd.ru/document/1200045443
• Russian domestic software registry, KOMPAS-3D — reestr.digital.gov.ru