CAD and GIS have never spoken the same language. Surveyors and engineers work in AutoCAD, Civil 3D and MicroStation, where a drawing is a set of layers floating in an abstract coordinate space. GIS analysts work in QGIS and ArcGIS, where every feature carries a real-world coordinate reference system (CRS) and an attribute table. Getting data across that divide — DXF and DGN in one direction, Shapefile, KML and GeoJSON in the other — is one of the most common and most frustrating tasks in applied geospatial work.

This guide walks through the conversions that matter, what actually survives each one, and the free browser-based tools you can use to do them without installing anything.

Bringing CAD drawings into GIS

The usual reason to convert DXF to Shapefile is that you have received a site plan, boundary or utility drawing from a CAD team and you need to analyse it alongside other spatial data. The geometry — lines, polylines and polygons — converts cleanly, and DXF layer names are preserved as an attribute you can filter on. You can do this directly in the browser with the DXF to Shapefile converter.

The one thing to watch is the coordinate system. DXF files store no CRS at all — the coordinates are just numbers in the drawing’s own units. After converting, you need to assign the CRS the drawing was actually drawn in (British National Grid, a UTM zone, a State Plane zone, and so on) so the features land in the right place. If your destination is Google Earth rather than a GIS, the DXF to KML converter does the same job and reprojects to WGS84 for you.

MicroStation users face the same workflow with DGN. A DGN to Shapefile converter handles V7 (ISFF) drawings; if your file is DGN V8, export it to V7 or to DXF from MicroStation first, because the open-source DGN driver cannot read the V8 compound format.

Sending GIS data back to CAD

The reverse trip is just as common. When a CAD team needs your parcels, survey control or design linework, they usually want a DXF that opens natively in AutoCAD. The Shapefile to DXF converter (SHP to DXF) turns your .shp/.dbf/.prj set into AutoCAD-ready geometry. Here the direction of the CRS problem flips: pick the projected coordinate system your CAD project uses before you convert, so the linework overlays correctly on the drawing.

Field data and web data often need the same treatment. Coordinates captured in Google Earth can be converted with the KML to DXF converter, and data pulled from a WFS service or national mapping agency in GML can go straight to CAD with the GML to DXF converter.

From survey points to CAD geometry

A huge amount of survey and setting-out data never touches a GIS at all — it lives in a spreadsheet as point number, easting, northing, elevation and description. To drop those points into a drawing, the CSV to DXF converter reads the coordinate columns and writes CAD geometry you can build on in AutoCAD or Civil 3D.

Sharing a drawing with people who don’t have CAD

Sometimes you don’t want to convert the data at all — you just want to send it to a client or planner who can’t open a DXF. Exporting the drawing to a fixed document with the DXF to PDF converter produces something anyone can open and print, no AutoCAD licence required.

What survives a CAD ↔ GIS conversion?

• Geometry — lines, polylines, arcs and closed shapes convert reliably in both directions.
• Layers — CAD layer names are preserved as a GIS attribute, and vice versa.
• Coordinate system — this is the piece that trips people up. CAD formats carry no CRS, so you must assign or choose one on the GIS side of every conversion.
• Text, blocks and hatching — CAD annotation and fills generally do not convert to GIS features. Expect to lose them.

Do it in the browser

Every conversion above runs client-side — your files never leave your device, which matters when the drawings are commercially sensitive. You can find the full set on the DXF tools hub, alongside DGN and other CAD-adjacent converters.