CAD Drawings
Upload or sync an AutoCAD DWG and work with the native drawing in Nomic — not a flattened PDF. Open it in the in-browser CAD viewer, ask Assistant about layers, blocks, attributes, and labels, and click citations that jump to the entity on the plan.
Key Use Cases
View the native drawing
Open a DWG (or DXF) from Files, a project, or an Assistant attachment. Pan, zoom, switch layout tabs, and inspect layers without AutoCAD.
Layouts — Model space and paper-space tabs with geometry.
Layers — Turn layers on or off as you inspect the sheet.
Selection — Click an entity (a door insert, a room label, a title-block attribute) so you can ask Assistant about that object.
Editing and saving CAD changes is not available in this release. Availability of the viewer may depend on your workspace configuration.
Ask Assistant about the drawing
Attach a DWG to a conversation — or include it through a project — and ask in plain language:
“What layers are in this drawing, and which ones are frozen?”
- “List every door insert and its attribute tags.”
- “Read the title-block text and room names.”
- “How many TEXT and MTEXT labels are on layer A-ANNO?”
- “Isolate the A-WALL layer.”
Assistant reads extracted labels, queries structured CAD data (entity types, layers, blocks, geometry, and INSERT attributes), can hide or isolate layers in the open viewer, and returns clickable entity citations. Click a citation to open the drawing zoomed to that object.
Assistant can query up to four DWG files at once, so you can compare two versions or pull the same block name from several sheets.
Select an entity, then ask
Click an object in the viewer, then ask about it in Assistant. Nomic passes the selected handle, type, and layer so Assistant can look up that entity — “What is this block?”, “Hide everything except this layer.”, “List the attributes on this insert.”
This is the fastest path when you already have the object on screen and want its data, not a search across the whole file.
Supported Formats
| Format | Extension | Viewer | Assistant query | Max extract size |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DWG | .dwg | Yes | Yes | 200 MB |
| DXF | .dxf | Yes | No | — |
Assistant query, label extract, and entity citations require DWG. DXF opens in the same viewer but is not extracted for structured queries.
DWG files are not indexed for semantic search. Folder Index skips CAD drawings. Use Assistant on an attached or project-scoped DWG instead.
Supported Context
Autodesk Forma Integration
Sync DWG drawings from Autodesk Forma projects
Bentley Integration
Sync DWG drawings from Bentley ProjectWise projects
SharePoint Integration
Attach synced SharePoint CAD folders to project context
Egnyte Integration
Attach synced Egnyte CAD folders to project context
Direct Upload
Upload DWG or DXF files directly to Nomic
How Preparation Works
CAD drawings do not follow the Parse and Embed indexing pipeline. After you upload or sync a DWG, Nomic extracts structured drawing data — entities, layers, blocks, and attributes — and caches it for that file version. The viewer opens the native file. Assistant can read labels and run queries once extract finishes; if a question comes in while the drawing is still preparing, wait a moment and ask again.
A new uploaded or synced version is extracted again on next access.
Drawing-review markups and Bluebeam-style callouts still run on PDF sheet sets. Keep using a plotted PDF for a drawing review; use the DWG when you need native layers, blocks, and entity data.
Related Resources
- Files — Browse, search, and manage drawings alongside other files.
- Assistant — How Assistant uses tools, context, and citations.
- BIM Model Intelligence — IFC models are a separate viewer and query path.
- Indexing — How document indexing differs from CAD extract.
- Uploads — Upload DWG files directly to Nomic.