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Total CAD ConverterX

Convert DWG, DXF, PLT, HPGL to PDF and TIFF on Windows servers — without AutoCAD.

Total CAD ConverterX — Server DWG/DXF Converter with ActiveX, DLL & Command Line

Windows
2000/2003/Vista
7/8/10/11
and
2012/2016 / 2019/2022 Server
and
Docker / Citrix / Wine

Total CAD ConverterX is a server-side SDK that converts DWG, DXF, DWF, PLT, HPGL, SVG, and CGM drawings to PDF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, WMF, and DXF — without AutoCAD installed on the server. It runs headless: no GUI, no dialogs, nothing to click. Total CAD ConverterX ships with both a command-line binary and an ActiveX/COM interface, so it drops into ASP, PHP, .NET, Python, Ruby, Java, and any other COM-aware backend.

Supported source formats: dxf, dwg, dwf, plt, hg, hgl, hpg, plo, hp, hpl, hpgl, hp1, hp2, hpgl2, gl2, spl, prn, svg, cgm.

Total CAD ConverterX has unique options to batch convert several CAD files at a time:

  • convert each CAD file to the target format of your choice (for example, 10 DXF files to 10 PDF files);
  • convert several CAD files to one file (for example, 10 DXF files into 1 multi-page PDF file);
  • combine output files within folders;
  • convert and combine output files based on the common file name. For example, converting files Qwe 1.dxf, Qwe 2.dxf, Asd 1.dxf, Asd 2.dxf you get Qwe.tiff and Asd.tiff.
If you convert large amounts of CAD files on a daily basis you will find these options indispensable. Total CAD ConverterX can easily resize your files during conversion, no additional actions are required. Download your free evaluation copy now and try it on your files. It's valid for 30 days.

Looking for server-based solutions? Discover a range of server products tailored for robust performance at CoolUtils Server Products.

If you need examples on programming languages please contact us. We will create any example for you.

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(includes 30 day FREE trial)

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(only $950.00)

 
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Examples of Total CAD ConverterX

Convert CAD files With TotalCADConverterX and .NET


string src  = @"C:\test\Source.dwg";
string dest = @"C:\test\Dest.pdf";

var cnv = new CADConverterX();
cnv.Convert(src, dest, "-c PDF -log c:\\test\\CAD.log");

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(cnv.ErrorMessage))
    throw new Exception(cnv.ErrorMessage);

Download .NET CAD Converter example

Convert CAD Files On Web Servers With Total CAD ConverterX

public static class Function1
    {
        [FunctionName("Function1")]
        public static async Task Run(
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Anonymous, "get", "post", Route = null)] HttpRequest req,
            ILogger log)
        {
            StringBuilder sbLogs = new StringBuilder();
            sbLogs.AppendLine("started...");
            try
            {
                ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
                startInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
                startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
                var assemblyDirectoryPath = Path.GetDirectoryName(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location);
                assemblyDirectoryPath = assemblyDirectoryPath.Substring(0, assemblyDirectoryPath.Length - 4);

                var executablePath = $@"{assemblyDirectoryPath}\Converter\CADConverterX.exe";
                sbLogs.AppendLine(executablePath + "...");
                var msgPath = $@"{assemblyDirectoryPath}\MSG\MSG-1.dwg";
                var outPath = Path.GetTempFileName() + ".pdf";
                startInfo.FileName = executablePath;

                if (File.Exists(outPath))
                {
                    File.Delete(outPath);
                }

                if (File.Exists(executablePath) && File.Exists(msgPath))
                {
                    sbLogs.AppendLine("files exists...");
                }
                else
                    sbLogs.AppendLine("EXE & MSG files NOT exists...");
                startInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
                startInfo.Arguments = $"{msgPath} {outPath}";
                using (Process exeProcess = Process.Start(startInfo))
                {
                    sbLogs.AppendLine($"wait...{DateTime.Now.ToString()}");
                    exeProcess.WaitForExit();
                    sbLogs.AppendLine($"complete...{DateTime.Now.ToString()}");
                }

                int sleepCounter = 10;

                while(!File.Exists(outPath) && sleepCounter > 0)
                {
                    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(1000);
                    sbLogs.AppendLine("sleep...");
                    sleepCounter--;
                }
                if (File.Exists(outPath))
                    sbLogs.AppendLine("Conversion complete successfully.");
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                sbLogs.AppendLine(ex.ToString());
            }

            return new OkObjectResult(sbLogs);
        }
    }
More information about Azure Functions.

Convert CAD Files On Web Servers With Total CAD ConverterX

dim C
Set C=CreateObject("CADConverter.CADConverterX")
C.Convert "c:\test\source.dwg", "c:\test\dest.pdf", "-cPDF -log c:\test\CAD.log"
Response.Write C.ErrorMessage
set C = nothing
Example2 ASP: directly stream the resulting PDF
dim C
Set C=CreateObject("CADConverter.CADConverterX")
Response.Clear
Response.AddHeader "Content-Type", "binary/octet-stream"
Response.AddHeader "Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=test.pdf"
Response.BinaryWrite c.ConvertToStream("C:\www\ASP\Source.dwg", "C:\www\ASP", "-cpdf  -log c:\html.log")
set C = nothing

Convert DWG and DFX Files On Web Servers With Total CAD ConverterX

Example PHP:
$src="C:\\test\\test.dwg";
$dest="C:\\test\\test.pdf";
if (file_exists($dest)) unlink($dest);
$c= new COM("CADConverter.CADConverterX");
$c->convert($src,$dest, "-c pdf -log c:\\test\\Mail.log");
if (file_exists($dest)) echo "OK"; else echo "fail:".$c->ErrorMessage;

Convert CAD files With Total CAD ConverterX and Ruby

require 'win32ole'
c = WIN32OLE.new('CADConverter.CADConverterX')

src="C:\\test\\test.dwg";
dest="C:\\test\\test.pdf";

c.convert(src,dest, "-c PDF -log c:\\test\\CAD.log");

if not File.exist?(dest)
  puts c.ErrorMessage
end

Convert CAD files With Total CAD ConverterX and Python

import win32com.client
import os.path

c = win32com.client.Dispatch("CADConverter.CADConverterX")

src="C:\\test\\test.dwg";
dest="C:\\test\\test.pdf";

c.convert(src, dest, "-c PDF -log c:\\test\\CAD.log");

if not os.path.exists(file_path):
  print(c.ErrorMessage)

Convert CAD files With Pascal and Total CAD ConverterX

uses Dialogs, Vcl.OleAuto;

var
  c: OleVariant;
begin
  c:=CreateOleObject('CADConverter.CADConverterX');
  C.Convert('c:\test\source.dwg', 'c:\test\dest.pdf', '-cPDF -log c:\test\CAD.log');
  IF c.ErrorMessage<>'' Then
    ShowMessage(c.ErrorMessage);
end;

Convert DWG and DFX Files On Web Servers With Total CAD ConverterX

var c = new ActiveXObject("CADConverter.CADConverterX");
c.Convert("C:\\test\\source.dwg", "C:\\test\\dest.pdf", "-c PDF");
if (c.ErrorMessage!="")
  alert(c.ErrorMessage)

Convert CAD files With Total CAD ConverterX and Perl

use Win32::OLE;

my $src="C:\\test\\test.dwg";
my $dest="C:\\test\\test.pdf";

my $c = CreateObject Win32::OLE 'CADConverter.CADConverterX';
$c->convert($src,$dest, "-c pdf  -log c:\\test\\CAD.log");
print $c->ErrorMessage if -e $dest;

quote

Total CAD ConverterX Customer Reviews 2026

Rate It
Rated 4.7/5 based on customer reviews
5 Star

"Replaced our AutoCAD-based DWG-to-PDF microservice with Total CAD ConverterX last year. We were paying for AutoCAD seats on three converter VMs just so a single COM-automation script could run. Now those VMs run nothing but CADConverterX.exe behind a queue. Conversion latency dropped from around 25 seconds per drawing to 4 seconds, and our annual licensing bill went down by an order of magnitude. The ActiveX integration with our .NET worker took half a day."

5 Star Marko D.
Senior Backend Developer

"We run Total CAD ConverterX inside a Windows Server Core container as part of an Azure pipeline. Customers upload DWGs, the queue picks them up, the converter renders PDF/A archival output, files go to blob storage. No GUI, no AutoCAD, no licensing surprises. The -log flag gives us per-file lines that go straight into our log aggregator. Setup was straightforward: register the COM, mount a working directory, done."

5 Star Anita V.
DevOps Engineer

"We accept customer drawings in any format clients send us: DWG, PLT, HPGL2, SVG, the lot. Our intake portal calls Total CAD ConverterX via the PHP COM interface and produces a preview PDF before the operator starts plotting. The fact that PLT and HPGL2 just work out of the box is the reason we picked this over the alternatives. Most CAD libraries focus on DWG and treat plotter formats as second-class citizens."

5 Star Stefan K.
CTO at a printing & plotting bureau

"Bundled Total CAD ConverterX into our drawing-management product under the Royalty-Free License. The one-time per-project fee was a fraction of what we were paying our previous vendor in per-seat redistribution royalties. Our installer ships the ActiveX, registers it during setup, and our application calls it directly. Clients never see the converter. Support has been responsive whenever we hit an unusual format edge case."

5 Star Paolo F.
Independent Software Vendor

"Solid replacement for the AutoCAD COM automation we were using for batch DXF-to-PDF in an internal asset workflow. The previous setup needed a full AutoCAD install on the conversion box and broke after every AutoCAD upgrade. Total CAD ConverterX runs as a plain Windows binary and survives unattended overnight runs. Documentation could be more comprehensive in places (we had to ask support about a couple of CLI flags), but every question got a useful answer within a business day."

4 Star Lena B.
Lead .NET Developer


Command-Line Examples

Total CAD ConverterX ships with CADConverterX.exe, a console binary you can drive from scripts, scheduled tasks, CI runners, or any backend service. The flag set matches the GUI CADConverter.exe; for the full reference see the command-line documentation. The recipes below cover the cases we hear about most often from SDK customers.

1. Convert a single drawing to PDF

The smallest possible call — one source file, one output, one target format.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\plan.dwg" "C:\out\plan.pdf" -cPDF

2. Batch a folder by mask

Process every DWG in a folder and drop the PDFs into a sibling output directory.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\*.dwg" "C:\out\" -cPDF

Swap the mask for *.dxf, *.plt, *.hpgl, etc. to pick a different source format.

3. Recurse a project tree and mirror its folder structure

Architectural and engineering projects rarely live in one flat folder. -Recurse walks subdirectories; -kfs recreates the same tree on the output side instead of flattening everything into one bucket.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\projects\AcmeTower\*.dwg" "C:\out\AcmeTower\" -cPDF -Recurse -kfs

4. Combine a multi-sheet drawing set into one PDF

A typical CAD deliverable is an album: dozens of sheets that belong together. -combine merges them into a single PDF in source-file order.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\projects\AcmeTower\sheets\*.dwg" "C:\out\AcmeTower-album.pdf" -cPDF -combine

Use -sort name or -sort numbers to control sheet order, and -cimt onefile when targeting multipage TIFF instead of PDF.

5. Export to DXF or SVG instead of PDF

For data exchange between CAD tools, or for embedding drawings on a web page, render to a vector format other than PDF.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\*.dwg" "C:\out\" -cDXF
CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\*.dwg" "C:\out\" -cSVG

6. High-DPI archival TIFF (B/W, G4 compression)

Long-term blueprint archives are usually black-and-white TIFF with G4 fax compression — small on disk, lossless, accepted by every viewer.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\*.dwg" "C:\archive\" -cTIF -dpi 600 -cm bw -tc G4FAX

Drop -dpi to 300 for screen review copies, or push to 1200 if the file will go to a wide-format plotter.

7. Unattended runs with a detailed log

Once CADConverterX.exe runs as a service or scheduled job, the only way to know what happened is the log. -verbosity detail writes one line per file; -logmode append keeps history across runs.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\*.dwg" "C:\out\" -cPDF -log "C:\logs\cadconv.log" -verbosity detail -logmode append

8. Drive a queue from a list file

When a worker writes a queue file and the converter consumes it, you don't want to encode the file paths into the command line itself. -list reads file masks (one per line) from a text file.

CADConverterX.exe -list "C:\queues\batch.txt" "C:\out\" -cPDF

9. Password-protected PDF with a watermark

Standard for sending drawings to subcontractors: an owner password locks edit/print permissions, a user password gates opening the file, and a watermark labels every page.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\*.dwg" "C:\out\" -cPDF -mp "owner-pwd" -up "user-pwd" -perm Copy -wmt "CONFIDENTIAL"

Replace Copy with any combination of Modify, Annotation, FormFill, HighResPrint to grant exactly the rights you want.

10. PDF/A archival output with metadata

For records-management workflows that require ISO 19005-compliant PDF/A files with proper authoring metadata.

CADConverterX.exe "C:\drawings\*.dwg" "C:\archive\" -cPDF -pdfa -PDFAuthor "Acme Engineering" -PDFTitle "Tower Project Phase 2" -PDFSubject "As-built drawings"
Download Now!

Updated Fri, 01 May 2026

Buy License

(only $950.00)



Frequently Asked Questions About Total CAD ConverterX ▼

No. Total CAD ConverterX is fully self-contained and parses DWG, DXF, DWF, PLT, HPGL, SVG, and CGM drawings on its own. You do not need AutoCAD, BricsCAD, or any other CAD application on the conversion server, which removes per-server AutoCAD licensing from your production deployment.
Input formats: dxf, dwg, dwf, plt, hg, hgl, hpg, plo, hp, hpl, hpgl, hp1, hp2, hpgl2, gl2, spl, prn, svg, cgm. Output formats: PDF (including PDF/A archival), TIFF (multi-page, B/W, G4 compression), JPEG, PNG, BMP, WMF, and DXF. You can also merge multiple source drawings into a single multi-page PDF or TIFF.
Total CAD ConverterX exposes a COM/ActiveX interface, so any COM-aware language can call it directly: new COM("CADConverter.CADConverterX") in PHP, new CADConverterX() in .NET, win32com.client.Dispatch in Python, WIN32OLE.new in Ruby, and CreateOleObject in Pascal/Delphi. The page above includes ready-to-paste code samples for each language. Alternatively, the CADConverterX.exe command-line binary can be invoked from any process, scheduler, or shell script.
Total CAD Converter is the desktop GUI version intended for interactive use on a workstation. Total CAD ConverterX is the server SDK: no graphical interface, no dialogs, no end-user interaction. It is licensed for unattended server-side use, includes the ActiveX/COM interface for application integration, and supports a Royalty-Free License for redistribution inside your own product.
Yes. Because the converter is a regular Windows binary with a COM interface, it runs anywhere Windows runs: IIS application pools, Windows containers, Azure App Service or Azure Functions on the Windows runtime, AWS EC2 Windows instances, Citrix, Wine, and on-premises Windows Server. The page above includes a working Azure Functions example. For Docker, base your image on a Windows container such as mcr.microsoft.com/windows/servercore and register the ActiveX during the image build.
Yes. Total CAD ConverterX has four batch modes: convert each source drawing to a separate output file, merge all sources into a single multi-page output file, combine output by directory, and combine output by shared filename prefix. The -combine command-line flag enables single-file merging; -sort name or -sort numbers controls sheet order. This is the standard workflow for assembling a multi-sheet drawing set into a single deliverable PDF.
Total CAD ConverterX ships with both 32-bit and 64-bit ActiveX builds, so you can register the matching version for your IIS application pool or .NET runtime. For redistribution inside your own software, contact us for a Royalty-Free License: a one-time per-project fee that lets you bundle the ActiveX with your installer and ship it to your end users without per-seat fees.
Yes. The download is a fully functional 30-day trial with all output formats, ActiveX, and command-line features unlocked — no credit card and no email required to start. After 30 days you decide whether to purchase. The license is one-time payment with lifetime updates and technical support.
Download Now!

Updated Fri, 01 May 2026

Buy License

(only $950.00)


Release Notes

  • 03 March 2026 Added support for JWW format

Start working now!

Download free trial and convert your files in minutes.
No credit card or email required.

⬇ Download Free Trial Windows 7/8/10/11 • 193 MB
Pro Suite

Key Features Of Full Registered Version

  • Provides access via ActiveX interface for all legacy programming languages (Visual Basic 6 or Delphi) as well as scripting (i.e. VBscript).
  • Any language that supports Web Services including .NET (2.00, 3.5, 4.00), Ruby, PHP and Java is supported.
  • Supports dxf, dwg, plt, hg, hgl, hpg, plo, hp, hpl, hpgl, hp1, hp2, hpgl2, gl2, spl, prn, svg, cgm files.
  • Converts them to PDF, TIFF, JPEG, BMP, WMF, PNG, DXF, BMP.
  • Has no GUI, perfect for servers and terminals.
  • Preserves original document layout, fonts, curves, colors.
  • Offers a lot of additional settings (watermarking, pagination, encryption, merging files into one, etc.)
  • Is extremely easy-to-use.

    Need CAD conversion feature in your app?

    Get a royalty-free license. It allows you implement Total CAD ConverterX into your software and redistribute it. RFL is licensed per project (no matter how many developers are involved).
    Apply via contact form.

System Requirements


  • Available on: PC
  • OS: Windows Server 2000 / 2003 / 2008 / 2012 / 2016 / 2019 / 2022 (32 and 64-bit)
    Windows 2000 / 7 / 8 / 10 / 11 (32 & 64-bit)
  • Keyboard: Integrated Keyboard
  • Mouse: Integrated Mouse
  • Memory: 4 GB

List of apps with built-in API support