DeXeF vs NextCAD

DeXeF views DXF files on Apple devices. Open a drawing and pan, zoom, and read off coordinates against a reference grid, with every layer just a toggle away. On macOS, DeXeF also provides Quick Look previews and Finder thumbnails, so you can peek at a DXF file without opening the app. There are many DXF viewers on the App Store, but all of them are terrible and cost too much. This one is free, low on mystery meat, and hopefully broadly functional.

NextCAD is a native DXF viewer for iPhone and iPad, built on a Rust core for checking mechanical, architectural and apparel drawings wherever you are. • Accurate: distance, running length, area and angle use analytic geometry — arcs are never approximated by polylines. Snap to endpoints, midpoints and centers. • Complete: LWPOLYLINE, SPLINE, HATCH, DIMENSION, nested blocks, Paper Space layouts, Binary DXF, GBK/UTF-8, R12–2018 • Layers: toggle, isolate, and view by layer color • Markup: text, arrows and revision clouds, saved separately — your original drawing is never modified • Export: PDF (fit to page or true 1:1 tiled pages), PNG, SVG • Patterns: open parametric .dpat garment patterns and regenerate them live with sliders • Includes a sample drawing so you can try it right away Unsupported entities are reported explicitly, never silently dropped. NextCAD works offline and collects no data — your drawings stay on your device, in Files, or in iCloud.