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Overview

ProDex reads three CAD input formats: DWG, DXF, and STEP. Everything else — including STL, IGES, and native SolidWorks files — is not accepted as input. Which format you upload determines what Dexter can extract: DWG/DXF carry the 2D drawing world (layers, text labels, part marks), while STEP carries a clean 3D product structure with full curved geometry.
DWG 3D support is limited to the AutoCAD 2018 (AC1032) release. A DWG saved from any other release fails 3D analysis with a clear error. The fix is quick: export the file as DXF or STEP from your CAD tool and upload that instead. 2D reading of DWG is more forgiving, but AC1032 is the only release supported end to end.

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What Gets Extracted

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DWG and DXF

  • File identity — format and version (e.g. AC1032), overall extents and bounding box, and units.
  • Layers — the full layer list with names, inferred roles, and sub-assembly grouping derived from layer naming conventions.
  • Entity tally — counts of every entity type in the file.
  • Text labels — every label with its position. Corrupted MTEXT labels are flagged as suspect, and readable fragments are recovered where possible.
  • Synthesized BOM — unique part marks grouped by sub-assembly, solid-body counts per assembly, joint callouts, and orientation tags, always accompanied by caveats about how the grouping was derived.
  • 2D renders — a full-page overview image, or targeted crops by part mark, layer, or bounding box.
  • 3D mesh statistics — total solids, total triangles, model bounding box and dimensions; per sub-assembly: body count, overall dimensions, distinct plate thicknesses, and sample plate sizes.
  • 3D renders — named views or custom orientations, with each part or sub-assembly drawn in a stable color and a legend.
DWG units are inferred, not read. The DWG format carries no unit header, so Dexter infers units from geometry extents and plate thicknesses (a 0.1875 in plate reading as 3/16″ suggests imperial, for example). Treat reported units as a strong hint to verify, not an authoritative fact from the file.

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STEP

  • Header information — schema (AP203/AP214/AP242), units, and description fields.
  • Product and assembly graph — component names and placement counts, the STEP analogue of a drawing’s part-mark BOM.
  • Full mesh — complete tessellation including curved faces, feeding the same 3D statistics and rendered views as DWG/DXF, but with nothing dropped.
A STEP “BOM” counts placement occurrences, not physical quantities. A flattened export can place the same physical part under many nodes and inflate the count — and a STEP file with zero assembly links (a single solid or flattened export) yields no BOM at all, only a solid-body count. Dexter flags both situations in its caveats.

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Not extracted from any format

  • Title-block metadata as a structured object (title-block text still comes through as ordinary text labels)
  • Material properties, tolerances, and GD&T annotations
  • Feature history or a parametric feature tree
  • Colors, appearances, and textures as structured metadata

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Curved Geometry

The DWG/DXF 3D path meshes planar faces only. Curved faces — fillets, cylinders, cones, NURBS surfaces, bolt holes — are counted and reported as dropped, but they are not tessellated. A part that is entirely curved contributes zero triangles, and a file where every solid is fully curved has nothing to show in 3D. The curves are dropped only from the mesh, not from the underlying solid data Dexter reads: the full ACIS B-rep carries the curves — the planar mesher simply can’t tessellate them on this permissive path. STEP does not have this limitation: curved faces are meshed in full. When curved geometry matters and you can choose the upload format, choose STEP.

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Formats Not Supported

Almost every mainstream CAD package exports STEP. When in doubt, export AP214 or AP242 STEP from your native tool — it is the most complete path through ProDex’s CAD analysis.
If your specific CAD setup isn’t well supported by the paths above, reach out to your ProDex team — they can advise on the best route for your files.

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Size and Complexity Limits

There is no CAD-specific file-size cap. CAD files fall under the same per-file upload limit as everything else — 2 GB. The other practical limit is processing time: very large assemblies analyze more slowly and can hit memory bounds during meshing. If a large assembly is slow, ask Dexter to focus on a specific sub-assembly, layer, or region instead of the whole model.

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Exported Geometry

CAD analysis is read-and-render only. Dexter reads and renders your file’s geometry, but it does not produce exported CAD geometry files — DXF, STL, OBJ, GLB, or PLY — that you can download or open in another tool. What you take away from an analysis are the findings, tables, and rendered images in the chat; roll those into a report if you need a shareable deliverable. See CAD Analysis for the full workflow.