Import a DXF drawing as a traceable backdrop, calibrate its scale, and snap to it.
A CAD background brings an existing DXF drawing in as a backdrop you can trace your plant-room
layout over — for example an architectural floor plan. Open it from the CAD ribbon verb →
Import background.
DXF is parsed in your browser — nothing is uploaded. Limit: DXF only, max 15 MB.
The import wizard
Importing runs a three-step wizard:
File — drop or browse for a .dxf file. The wizard reports what it found: detected units,
entity and layer counts, and how many unsupported entities were skipped. You can choose whether
to import text and import dimensions.
Calibrate — set the drawing's real-world scale. Either accept "Drawing is already to
scale" (use detected units directly), or pick two points a known distance apart and enter that
known real-world distance. The wizard shows the resulting scale and the drawing's span so you
can sanity-check it ("If these read in kilometres, your distance is off by 1000×.").
Place — position the background. Here you can set layer visibility & colour, turn on
Snap walls/columns to CAD vertices, and optionally use a layer as the room outline —
including Draw room from largest closed loop to build the room directly from the drawing.
Working with the background
Two status-bar toggles control it once loaded:
CAD bg — show or hide the background underlay.
Snap CAD — snap your walls and columns to the CAD geometry's vertices while drawing.
The background is a reference layer: it helps you trace but is not part of your equipment or
document geometry, and it isn't sent to the server on export.
Exporting to CAD
The CAD verb also offers Export to CAD, which writes your layout to DXF with one layer per
element type. See Exporting for formats and plan gating.