Using AutoCAD legacy drawings

progeCAD fully supports AutoCAD legacy drawings. progeCAD reads and writes .dwg files in their native format without any loss of data, from AutoCAD 2007 back to Version 11, including AutoCAD LT. Because progeCAD uses Autodesk DWG format as its native file format, no translation is required.

progeCAD provides you with the appropriate tools for your experience levelwhether you are a beginner, intermediate, or advanced CAD user. If you are just starting out with CAD, you may want to use the beginner level, which provides toolbars containing the basic tools such as lines, arcs, and circles. As you become more experienced, you can move to the intermediate level and then to the advanced level, which gives you access to more than 300 commands through toolbars, menus, and keyboard entries. You can change the experience level in the Options dialog box on the Tools menu.

progeCAD supports three-dimensional wireframes and surfaces. Three-dimensional drawings can be displayed in wireframe, hidden-line view, and surface shading. Some versions of progeCAD also support creating and editing 3D solids; all versions display 3D solids, along with limited editing features.

Some versions of progeCAD support displaying and working with raster images in your drawings. However, progeCAD does not display images located inside of blocks and externally referenced drawings (xrefs). When a drawing containing proxy entities is loaded into progeCAD, a message displays indicating that some entities will not display, however, the entities reappear when you open the drawing later in AutoCAD.

Its easy to customize progeCAD. You can modify menus and toolbars, create custom menus, dialog boxes, command aliases, and scripts, and add custom programs written in any of several programming languages, including DRX (the programs Autodesk ARX-compatible language), LISP (the programs Autodesk AutoLISP-compatible language), and SDS (Solutions Development System, the programs Autodesk ADS-compatible language). There is also Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

You can run existing Autodesk AutoLISP applications in progeCAD with little or no modification. progeCAD uses the Appload command so you can easily load LISP programs. progeCAD reads files that contain dialog control language (DCL) statements as well, which makes progeCAD compatible with dialog boxes created for AutoCAD.