What Is an EDRW File?

This is a CAD drawing you can open for free with eDrawings Viewer

By
Tim Fisher
Photo of Tim Fisher, Lifewire GM and Writer
Tim Fisher
Senior Vice President & Group General Manager, Tech & Sustainability
  • Emporia State University

Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the SVP and General Manager of Lifewire.

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Updated on March 7, 2023

What to Know

  • An EDRW file is a SolidWorks eDrawings file.
  • Open one for free with eDrawings Viewer.
  • Convert to JPG, PNG, GIF, etc. with that same program.

This article explains what an EDRW file is, how to open one on your computer or phone, and how to save one to JPG or some other image format for easier viewing and sharing.

What Is an EDRW File?

A file with the EDRW file extension is a CAD drawing used with SolidWorks eDrawings. In short, it's a format used for storing 2D designs in a "view only" format.

These files are useful when sharing a design not only because the file is compacted to a much smaller size than the raw design, making them much easier to share, but also because the original data can't be tampered with because the format is specially made for viewing a design, not editing it.

EDRW files in Windows 10 that open with eDrawings

Drawings in an EDRW file can be examined without the recipient needing a full, bulky CAD program installed.

XPS-formatted EDRWX files are similar.

How to Open an EDRW File

SolidWorks eDrawings Viewer is a free CAD tool that can open and animate eDrawings files. This program can protect the drawing with a password, too, and also supports similar formats like EASM, EASMX, EPRT, EPRTX, and EDRWX.

It's available on several operating systems, but it's free only for desktop users:

How to Convert an EDRW File

If you download the viewer program linked above, you can convert EDRW to BMP, TIF, JPG, PNG, GIF, and HTM.

The same program can save the drawing to EXE (or even a ZIP with the EXE automatically saved inside) so it can be opened on a computer that doesn't have the eDrawings software installed.

You can convert EDRW to PDF with a PDF printer tool.

We're not aware of any file converters that can convert this format to DWG or DXF, which are two other CAD file formats. However, even with a conversion tool that supports getting the file into one of those formats, all it would let you do is view the 2D image, not edit it, since it's really just a viewing format.

Still Can't Open It?

If you still can't open the file, double-check the file extension to be sure you're reading it correctly. It's easy to confuse file extensions and therefore mix up the format you think it's in, which in turn results in errors when you try to open the file.

Some examples of this include DRW (Corel drawing), ERD (DBeaver diagram), WER (Windows error report), and DER (digital certificate) files.

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