OverCAD Dwg Compare

OverCAD Dwg Compare is an AutoCAD addon you can use to visually compare two .dwg-formatted files. For example, if you want to find out what changes have been made between two versions of the same file, you can resort to this tool to find out.

Before proceeding any further, you should know that the program hasn't received updates for a long time, and it only works with older AutoCAD versions: 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.

After installing this addon, launch AutoCAD and you will be prompted by the OverCAD window. Afterward, find the OverCAD menu, click it and select OverCAD Dwg Compare.

In the popup window, you can type or paste the full path to the two .dwg files you want to compare, or use the built-in file browser to locate them. It's also possible to compare two directories filled with .dwg files as well as to generate a file with the comparison results (make sure to tell the app where you want to create this file).

By default, OverCAD Dwg Compare checks all supported entities but you can exclude any of them, such as 3DFACE, ARC, ATTRIB, BODY, CIRCLE, DIMENSION, ELLIPSE, HATCH, IMAGE, INSERT, LEADER, POINT, POLYLINE, REGION, SHAPE, and SOLID.

The differences in entities will be color-coded to tell apart the deleted (red), modified (yellow) and added (green) ones. However, you can turn these three colors into anything else.

You can ask OverCAD Dwg Compare to take into account layers, the text height, z-axis, color and linetype when comparing the two drawings.

Once the comparison job is done, the two drawings are loaded in the main window and placed side by side. You can analyze the report window on the right part to find out the type, status and handle of each entity, as well as toggle horizontal and vertical view for the side-by-side display. Command lines are supported.

All things considered, we have come to the conclusion that OverCAD Dwg Compare has useful features for verifying CAD drawings to quickly find out what entities have been added, removed or edited between the two versions of the same file. Hopefully, the developer will soon add support for newer AutoCAD versions.