CAD options

You can customize the default options for working with CAD data in ArcGIS Pro. On the Options dialog box, on the CAD tab, you can set the options described in this topic.

When using CAD data, you can convert a portion of or the entire CAD drawing to geodatabases. The On adding new layer to map, convert CAD feature class to project geodatabase option controls whether CAD data added to your map is automatically converted to feature classes in your project geodatabase. This option is not enabled by default.

All data represented by a CAD dataset is typically contained in a single source file. This includes geometry as well as non-graphic information, such as feature attributes and graphic properties that define symbology. CAD layers do not follow the GIS simple features model. CAD authors are free to combine geometry types and other data in a single layer. It is also possible to use line type and color to further classify the data. As a result, the data's context, along with textual information and a significant amount of human interpretation, can be required to identify geometry as a particular feature in GIS.

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