How to open dwl file in AotoCad 2018

[Anonymous]

How to open dwl file type in AutoCAD 2018

[rapidcad]

Hi, welcome to the forums. Unless you know something I don't (that's not impossible) dwl files are just temporary lock files which AutoCAD writes to your current folder in order to keep your drawing from being edited by someone else, and yet allow it to be available for Xreferencing. If you open them with notepad you will see that the contents are just file name, user name, machine name, and time stamp information that AutoCAD uses to finish the lock out process. In case you didn't know, all you need to worry about is .dwg files, unless you are just cleaning house. You can just delete any dwl files that remain after closing AutoCAD (if everyone else is out of that drawing). Often you will find them left in folders if someone crashed their AutoCAD drawing session.

Hope that helps.

[DannyNL]

And in addition to Ronald's information instead of opening the DWL-files with notepad, you can also use the command WHOHAS in AutoCAD to select any drawing and see if it's locked and by whom.

[pendean]

FYI Windows Notepad can open DWL files is that's all you want to do.

[Anonymous]

Hello, in my case i changed laptop from Win to Mac and a lot of Files that i transfered are in Dwl or dwl2 format. I saved these files and sent it to other people before and hey could open them. But i have an issuse at the moment to open them and edit.

[cadffm]

You can not open dwl(2) files in Autocad!?
Thats a Textfile, why you want to open these files? Delete them if you have wright rights.

??

[rapidcad]

Since you are on Mac I'm not sure what you are running into. Are the DWG files there alongside the DWL files in the same folder? If so, then something in the transfer process locked them. Deleting the DWL will free up the DWG. If there is only a DWL by the name of your drawing and no DWG, either the transfer process into Mac applied the wrong extension, or the wrong file got copied into your folder. If that is the case, how big are the DWL files? if they are just a few k then they are most likely just DWL files as I first described them, containing a few lines of information to lock out users from the real drawing file of the same name. If you try opening them in notepad or another text editor, you will either encounter a bunch of hash (real DWG) or some short list of information about the actual drawing file and who locked the file out last (DWL).

If they turn out to be larger than a few K and contain hash, just close notepad or your text editor and rename those files to .DWG and then try to open them in AutoCAD.

HTH

[purchaseVYAUZ]

HOW TO RECOVER FILE FROM DWL

[cadffm]

Hi,

.dwl files doesn't contain anything of your drawing. 

Take a look:

https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/how-to-recover-los...

[paullimapa]

"How to open dwl file in AotoCad 2018"

I get suspicious when OP misspells software name on this forum