AutoCAD DWG

DWG is AutoCAD's native format and the de facto standard for exchanging drawings in design practice: plans, master plans, facades and sections live in it without conversion. The format is closed and owned by Autodesk, but every mature CAD system opens it today — AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, BricsCAD, NanoCAD, DraftSight, ZWCAD.

OpenStreetMap maps are exported to DWG for use as a base plan. Instead of tracing a city block from a satellite image or commissioning a survey for the concept stage, the designer gets a ready-made context of the site — streets, buildings, water, greenery, boundaries — and works on top of it. For a sketch, site placement, a planning layout scheme or a client presentation, that is enough.

The output is a single .dwg file, and the version is yours to pick: from AutoCAD 2000 (AC1015) to AutoCAD 2018 (AC1032), newest by default. If your program is older, pick your release at export: the file is built in it directly, with no conversion on your side. The map is organized into named layers: roads, buildings, water, green areas, boundaries, POI — switch off the layers you don't need with one click and keep the rest as your base. Coordinates are metric (Web Mercator projection by default), so the drawing can be measured right away and aligned with your survey base.

A comfortable print scale for such a base plan is around 1:5000; the range where the file stays readable is 1:100 to 1:25000. The file is built through the Open Design Alliance converter; if the converter fails for any reason, the service does not stay silent or hand you a broken file — it honestly returns a DXF with a substitution note; the same CAD opens both formats.