Skip to main content
Back to Help

Use CAD drawings (DWG) in Nomic

Nomic opens native AutoCAD DWG files in an in-browser CAD viewer and lets Assistant query the drawing — layers, blocks, attributes, and labels — with citations that jump to the entity. You do not need AutoCAD installed.

For the full capability write-up, see CAD Drawings.

How to open a drawing

  1. Upload a .dwg (or .dxf) to Files, drop it into a project, or attach it with + in Assistant.
  2. Click the file to open the CAD viewer. Pan, zoom, switch layout tabs, and inspect layers.
  3. To ask about the drawing, attach it (or start from a project that already includes it) and ask a specific question.
DWG open in the Nomic CAD viewer from Files

What to ask Assistant

Useful prompts:

  • “What layers are in this drawing?”
  • “List door inserts and their attributes.”
  • “Read the title block and room names.”
  • “Isolate layer A-WALL.”

Select an entity in the viewer first if you want Assistant to inspect that object.

Assistant answering a DWG question with a clickable entity citation

Click a citation in the answer to zoom the viewer to that entity.

What works today

  • DWG — view, label extract, structured query, layer control, entity citations. Extract supports files up to 200 MB.
  • DXF — view only. Assistant cannot query DXF the way it queries DWG.
  • Not semantic search — CAD files are not indexed like PDFs. Folder Index skips them.
  • No CAD editing — you cannot save changes back to the DWG in this release.
  • Drawing-review markups still use PDF sheet sets. Plot to PDF for a drawing review.

If the viewer is missing, your workspace may not have CAD enabled yet — ask your admin or Nomic Support.

If Assistant says the drawing is still being prepared, wait a short time and ask again. A new uploaded or synced version is prepared again.