About Saving Drawings

Save drawing files for later use just as you do with other applications. You can also set up automatic saving and backup files and save only selected objects.

When you work on a drawing, you should save it frequently. Saving protects you from losing work in the event of a power failure or other unexpected event. If you want to create a new version of a drawing without affecting the original drawing, you can save it under another name.

The file extension for drawing files is .dwg, and unless you change the default file format in which drawings are saved, drawings are saved in the latest drawing file format. This format is optimized for file compression and for use on a network.

Note: The character limit for a DWG file name (including its path) is 256 characters.

Work Internationally

If you share drawing files with offices or companies in other countries and regions, the drawing file names might contain characters that are not used in other languages.

If a drawing file is created in a different language version of the operating system, the following will occur:

• If support for the language is installed, the file name characters are visible in Finder.
• If support for the language is not installed, the file name characters appear as a series of boxes in Finder.

In either case, you will be able to open the drawing file in AutoCAD 2007 because the product is Unicode compliant.

Note: If you share drawing files with companies using earlier releases of the product, you can avoid file name issues for Asian languages and languages that use accented characters. In those circumstances, do not use high ASCII values, or values of 80 hexadecimal and above, when creating a file name.