EchoCad

Name: EchoCad — Download free. DWG viewer
Availability: InStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: EchoPrime Studio

EchoCad opens AutoCAD DWG drawings directly inside QGIS. R14 through 2018 and newer formats are read without conversion steps and without separate converter installations. Each CAD layer becomes a QGIS layer. Entity colour, line type, line width and text size, rotation and colour are carried over. Hatch patterns are rebuilt from the definitions the drawing itself carries. Block attributes become queryable fields. Whole folders convert in one run with a per-file CSV report. Layer mapping profiles put CAD layers onto your own schema. Georeferencing from two reference points keeps Z values. Processing toolbox algorithms are included. Everything runs locally, on closed networks with no internet, so drawings never leave the machine. The interface follows the QGIS language, with English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese and Chinese included. Requires QGIS 3.34 LTR or newer on Windows or macOS.

★★★★★

5.0(1 ratings)

Download EchoCad (Official links)

File size: 0.196 MB

The latest version of EchoCad is: 0.2.8

Operating system: Windows, Mac OS

Languages: English

Developer: EchoPrime Studio

Price: $0.00 USD (Freemium product ($299 or free version))

Direct DWG reading. EchoCad Pro reads AutoCAD DWG files from the R14 format through 2018 and newer directly inside QGIS, with no intermediate conversion to DXF and no separate converter application to install or configure. The conversion library is bundled for Windows and macOS, so a drawing on a machine with no network connection opens the same way as one with a connection.
One QGIS layer per CAD layer. Rather than splitting a drawing into a single layer per geometry type, EchoCad creates one QGIS layer for each CAD layer found in the file, then splits that layer by geometry type where the drawing mixes points, lines and polygons on one layer. Layer names come from the drawing itself, so the structure of the source file survives the import.
Colour, line type and line width carried over. Entity colour, line type such as solid, dashed or dash-dot, and line width are transferred from the CAD entity to the QGIS feature. The drawing keeps its visual hierarchy instead of collapsing into a uniform default style, which matters when the drawing is used for review rather than analysis.
Hatch pattern reconstruction. Hatch fills are rebuilt from the pattern definitions the drawing carries internally, not flattened to a solid polygon. Patterns that reference standard definition names are reproduced as they appear in CAD, so material hatching, section fills and area shading remain distinguishable after import.
Text placement and encoding. Text entities are placed at their original size, rotation and colour, and attached to the layer they belong to. Korean, Japanese and Chinese text is read correctly regardless of what the drawing header declares about its encoding, which removes the character corruption common in other import paths.
Block attributes as fields. Block references with ATTRIB attributes produce one point layer per CAD layer, with every attribute tag found in that layer spread into a separate QGIS field. Tags a block does not carry are left NULL so blocks with different tag sets still land in one layer, and the original tag name is kept as the field alias.
Batch folder conversion. A folder of drawings converts in one operation, with subfolders optional. A single file failing does not stop the remaining files, and per-file results are written to a CSV report listing status, note, layer count, feature count and elapsed seconds, so a failed delivery can be explained later rather than guessed at.
Mapping profiles. A JSON profile of glob-pattern rules maps CAD layer names onto a target schema, with the first matching rule taking priority. Several CAD layers can merge into one output layer, the geometry type can be fixed or left automatic, and the original layer name is available as a placeholder in the output name. One file can be shared across a team and kept in version control.
Georeferencing from two points. A drawing without a coordinate system is placed by picking two reference points and supplying their coordinates. Z values are preserved through the transformation, so elevation data attached to the drawing survives the move into a projected coordinate system.
Closed polylines into polygons. Open polylines whose endpoints coincide are closed and converted into polygon features during import. This turns room outlines, parcel boundaries and similar closed shapes drawn as line work into area features that can be measured and queried, without a separate geometry repair step.
Processing toolbox algorithms. Import, batch import and related operations are exposed as QGIS Processing algorithms, so they can be placed inside a graphical model or called from a Python script. The batch algorithm accepts folder, recursion flag, coordinate system, mapping profile, attribute extraction flag, output path and report path as parameters.
GeoPackage and project output. Converted data is written to a GeoPackage file or loaded straight into the current QGIS project. Coordinate system is taken from the project unless overridden, and output layers keep the naming produced by the mapping profile, so the result is ready for styling, joins and analysis.
Local-only operation. No drawing, attribute or coordinate is transmitted anywhere during import. The software runs entirely on the machine, which covers environments where files are not permitted to leave the network and where no internet connection is available at all.
Failure reporting. Unsupported format, empty drawing and timeout conditions are distinguished from one another and reported as separate outcomes. Features dropped for broken coordinates are counted in the run note rather than removed silently, which keeps the difference between the source and the result accountable.

EchoCad was created in 2024 by a small development group working on facility management and infrastructure data in Switzerland and Germany, where drawings arrive as DWG files and the analysis happens in QGIS. The gap was concrete: QGIS cannot open DWG files newer than the AutoCAD 2000 format, and its built-in DXF import splits a drawing into one layer per geometry type, drops hatches and places text at the wrong size. The first version was a free DXF import plugin published in the official QGIS plugin repository, written in Python using the QGIS and GDAL APIs, with the DWG reading handled through the LibreDWG library. Pro followed with the converter bundled for Windows and macOS, block attribute extraction, batch conversion, mapping profiles and georeferencing from reference points. The bundled LibreDWG build is 0.14.8578, chosen because the commonly packaged 0.13.3 converts 44 of a 50-drawing sample and truncates 4, while 0.14.8578 converts 48. The free edition runs the same import code as Pro, one drawing at a time.