DXF was designed primarily to exchange drawing data between different CAD systems. Because it is text-based and well documented, many programs can read and generate DXF files, making it a common format for interoperability between design tools.

Example: Simplified DXF entity exchange

0
LINE
8
Geometry
10
0
20
0
11
200
21
0

This simple entity can be interpreted by many CAD programs that support DXF.