drawingtotext is a command line utility that extracts any text from DWG/DXF files. Usage: drawingtotext inputfile outputfile[optional] The input file must be a DWG or DXF file. The output file must be a .txt file. If the output file is not specified the results are sent out to the console. Dependencies ----------------------- - libreDWG & dxflib (how to install explained below) - build-essential - autoconf - libtool - python-dev - swig - texinfo How to install LibreDWG ----------------------- git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/libredwg.git sudo apt-get install build-essential sudo apt-get install autoconf sudo apt-get install libtool sudo apt-get install python-dev sudo apt-get install swig sudo apt-get install texinfo cd libredwg sh autogen.sh ./configure --enable-trace make sudo make install make check (these steps are mostly taken from http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibreDWG) How to install dxflib ----------------------- From the project directory... cd dxflib ./configure && make && sudo make install Once you've installed dxflib and LibreDWG, back up to the project directory and run "make". This should make an execuable file named drawingtotext. If you get a error about linking shared library LibreDWG run this command ldconfig Move drawingtotext to /usr/local/bin (mv drawingtotext /usr/local/bin) so it can be accessed via the command line from anywhere. - Down the road we will hopefully modify the makefile to have an install command. Misc ----------------------- This is mainly just a copy of the text extraction process from the following code: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-autocad/#download The code could probably have a lot of lines(and maybe whole files) removed, I haven't really gone through everything yet so I don't know what's required for the text extraction and what's not.