From the course: AutoCAD 2026 Essential Training

Comparing AutoCAD drawings with DWG Compare - AutoCAD Tutorial

From the course: AutoCAD 2026 Essential Training

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Comparing AutoCAD drawings with DWG Compare

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- [Instructor] We're starting a new chapter now and we're going to take a look at some drawing management tools that you might want to take on board when you are working with various AutoCAD drawings. Now, in this particular video we're going to take a look at two drawings and utilize the DWG Compare tool. Now, we've got two drawings open and I'd like you to download both of these from the library and open them up in AutoCAD. So you've got Simple Objects 001, where you've got a rectangle, a circle, and a hexagon. We've also got Simple Objects 002, which only has the rectangle and the circle this time. So let's go back to Simple Objects 001. If I go to the collaborate tab on the ribbon, DWG Compare is right there. If you want to compare the drawings, as you can see, you just type compare and press enter. Now, what we are going to do, we're going to make a comparison between the two drawings. So I click on DWG Compare and it'll prompt me, which drawing do I want to compare it to? Now, at the moment, our current drawing is Simple Objects 001. You can tell by the bold in the file tab there. So we're going to compare this against Simple Objects 002, the one without the hexagon, click on open. And what you'll find now is it goes into DWG Compare mode, so to speak. And if I just click on the settings here and just pin these open for a moment, you'll see based on what you've got on the screen, how these settings work. So you'll notice we've got not in current drawing, only in current drawing, and it'll also give you like a file length description thing there. If I hover over that, it gives me a great big long file name. Just ignore my long file names. So at the moment, the green is highlighting there because it's only in the current drawing. In both the drawings though, we have the circle and the rectangle, hence the gray, no differences. The revision cloud display is this yellow bit here and it's locked as you can see, and you can make it either polygonal or rectangular. Not much difference in this particular case. And we can change the size of it, we can make it bigger and smaller if we need to like so. Notice you can also filter hatch and text when you're doing a DWG Compare. What's also really nice is you can turn these on and off just like you can with layers with the little light bulb. When it's yellow, it's on, when it's blue, it's off. So those are the settings. So I'm just going to unpin the settings like so, and they'll go back into the DWG Compare toolbar here. Now, notice at the moment, that I can turn on the comparison display and I can also turn it off. That's the comparison display there with our little rev cloud and the green indicating that it's in this drawing only. If I click on this little arrow here, it'll take me to all of the comparisons in the DWG file. There's only one, so when I click on that arrow again, I can't go to any others. That's the only comparison we've got. And that's the hexagon in this drawing and it isn't in Simple Objects 002. Here as well, you'll notice if I hover over this, I can import objects from the compared drawing. Now, I can't do that this time because the hexagon is in this drawing, so I would need for the hexagon to be in another drawing to bring it into this drawing. I can also export out a comparison DWG file. So what it'll do is it'll put all of this revision cloud and the colors and so on of the comparison of the objects into a separate DWG file. To get out of DWG Compare, just click on the cross on the toolbar and you're back into the drawing again like so. So I'll just zoom and pan and get those centered. You can also zoom and pan when you are in DWG Compare as well. Now, I'm going to do something slightly different. What I'm going to do, I'm going to go to Simple Objects 002 and make that the current drawing. I'm then going to do DWG Compare again and compare it this time to 001, the one with the hexagon in it. Click on open and what you'll find now is based on the settings, let's pin those open again, you'll see not in current drawing. The red is highlighting here now. It's letting me know that that hexagon is not in this drawing. Notice everything else looks very much the same, but what I can do now is I can bring it in from the other drawing. So if I now import the objects from the compared drawing, it'll bring that in. So I select the hexagon, press enter to confirm, that is now in the drawing. Can you see they've all gone gray? So that indicates that they are now in both drawings. And if I now close the DWG Compare, I've brought the hexagon in to Simple Objects 002. If I go back to Simple Objects 001, there's a hexagon in there as well. How cool is that? It's very useful. So I'll go back to Simple Objects 002 I'll select the hexagon, right click and erase it so that we're back to where we were at the beginning. Simple Objects 002 doesn't have the hexagon. Simple Objects 001 does have the hexagon, and that's how you can utilize DWG Compare to compare objects in similar drawings. Then you can see what's different. It's great for checking one revision of a drawing against another revision of a drawing.

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