A PDF floor plan is a picture of a drawing.
The difference matters more than most people expect, and buying the wrong one is the most common avoidable expense in building documentation.
What each one actually is
PDF is an image. You can look at it, print it, mark it up and email it. You cannot reliably measure from it, edit it, or import it into design software without redrawing.
DWG is drawing data — real geometry on named layers, with dimensions and areas that exist as objects rather than as printed numbers. Your architect opens it and works. Your contractor takes off quantities. Your facilities team edits it after the next renovation.
The expensive mistake
A client buys a PDF floor plan because it is cheaper, then pays an architect or a drafter to redraw it in CAD. The redraw costs several times the difference — and it reintroduces every error a human transcription introduces, on a drawing that was supposed to be the reliable one.
If anyone downstream is going to work from the drawing rather than look at it, buy the DWG.
What we deliver
Both, on every project. DWG on AIA standard layers with labels, dimensions and area totals; PDF plotted sheets for sharing and markup; and the DXF point cloud underneath, so any dimension can be re-derived later.
We do not price the DWG as an upsell, because a measured record delivered as a picture is not really a measured record.
Can you convert a PDF to DWG?
A redraw from a PDF inherits every error in the PDF. If the building still exists, re-capturing it is usually faster, cheaper and materially more accurate.
What opens a DWG?
AutoCAD, Revit, SketchUp, Chief Architect, Vectorworks and most CAD environments.
Do we get both?
Yes, on every project, plus the point cloud.
Side by side
| DWG | ||
|---|---|---|
| Editable | Yes — every line is an object | No, or badly |
| Layered | Yes, AIA standard | Flattened in practice |
| True scale | Drawn at 1:1 in real units | Only if plotted and never resized |
| Measurable | Snap to any point, exact | Approximate, and see below |
| Opens with | AutoCAD, Revit, BricsCAD, free viewers | Anything |
| Right for | Design, coordination, modeling | Review, permits, sharing, printing |
The scale-to-fit trap
This is the specific way PDF floor plans cause real damage, and it is worth understanding because it is invisible. A PDF is plotted at a scale — say 1/8" = 1'-0". Measure it in a PDF viewer with the scale set correctly, and you get a usable number.
Then somebody prints it with "fit to page" ticked, or the sheet gets resized when it is inserted into a report, or it is exported at a different page size. The drawing is now at an unknown scale and every measurement taken off it is wrong by an unknown amount. Nothing about the printed sheet indicates this. The scale bar shrank along with everything else, so it still agrees with itself.
A DWG cannot have this problem. It is drawn at full size in real-world units; scale is a property of how you plot it, not of the geometry.
When the PDF is genuinely the right file
Often. A leasing flyer, a permit posting, a sheet emailed to a client who does not run CAD, a plan pinned to a wall in a job trailer, an exhibit in a report. PDF is universal, it prints predictably, and nobody can accidentally edit it. Those are real advantages, and we deliver plotted PDFs on every job for exactly those reasons.
The mistake is not using PDFs. It is receiving only a PDF and discovering it when your architect asks for the CAD file, three weeks into design, and the vendor charges to produce the thing they always had.
Every base package includes DWG on AIA standard layers, plotted PDF sheets, and the measured wall geometry in DXF. There is no tier where the CAD file is withheld and no upgrade to unlock it. If a vendor quotes you "floor plans" without saying which formats, that is the question to ask before you sign.