Why does my DWG text look wrong in the rendered image?

DWG (Drawing) is Autodesk's native binary format for AutoCAD, dating back to 1982 and remaining the lingua franca of architecture, MEP engineering, structural drafting, and civil design. Every release of AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT, Civil 3D, Revit (via export), and BricsCAD writes DWG, and the format version is tied to release year. Architects coordinate with structural engineers via DWG, contractors mark up site drawings in DWG, and shop-drawing fabricators reference DWG for steel and rebar schedules.

Converting DWG to HEIC turns a drawing into a snapshot for the devices that actually travel to site: iPads and iPhones. Field superintendents flip through plan images in the Photos app without any CAD viewer installed, and a set of 300 DPI sheet renders synced through iCloud gives the whole crew offline access. Because plan sheets are monochrome lineart, HEVC compresses them brutally well - a full floor plan typically lands at 400KB-1MB as HEIC, roughly half the JPG equivalent, so an entire drawing set fits in a text thread's worth of storage.

The conversion needs an AutoCAD-compatible parser because DWG is binary and version-specific - the Open Design Alliance (ODA) libraries power most third-party converters including ours. Common pitfalls: external references (XREFs) not resolved at conversion time appear as missing-link placeholders, and SHX font substitution can shift callouts and dimensions. Also keep the paperwork trail in mind: permit portals, RFI systems, and Bluebeam-based markup workflows expect PDF or JPG - render HEIC for the field crew's photo libraries and derive JPG via HEIC to JPG for formal submissions.

Reasons to convert DWG to HEIC usually come down to compatibility, file-size, or specific feature requirements. Common situations:

• An app or platform only accepts HEIC uploads.
• You need a feature unique to HEIC (e.g. transparency, vector scaling, animation, multi-page pages, etc.) that DWG doesn't provide.
• You're optimising file size — modern formats often produce smaller files than the older format you started with.
• You need a single archival format across a project so files behave consistently in the same viewer.

1. Open the DWG → HEIC tool on heic.now.
2. Drag your DWG file onto the drop zone, or click Select files. You can drop a whole folder of files at once.
3. The output is fixed to HEIC. If the format supports extra options (page size, transparency background, quality, EXIF stripping), tweak them in the right-hand panel.
4. Click Convert. The job runs on our server and finishes in a few seconds for typical photos.
5. Download the result. Files stay in storage for 24 hours and are then permanently deleted.

The entire flow is free for the first 10 jobs per day with no signup required. A free account doubles that quota; a premium plan removes the limit entirely.

• Bind all XREFs before conversion (BIND command in AutoCAD) - external references show as broken-link boxes if unresolved at render time.
• Set a paper-space layout with viewport scale before converting - model-space exports can come out at unpredictable extents.
• Use 300 DPI - thin dimension lines need it, and monochrome lineart compresses so well in HEIC that the size penalty is negligible.
• If your DWG uses SHX fonts (older AutoCAD shape fonts), the conversion may substitute - convert text to MText with TrueType first or expect minor glyph shifts.
• For multi-sheet DWGs (multiple layouts), our converter renders each layout as a separate HEIC and zips the output.