What is DWG?
DWG is AutoCAD’s native binary drawing format, created by Autodesk, and the de facto standard for CAD drawings such as site plans, survey data, and engineering designs.
A DWG file stores CAD entities — lines, polylines, arcs, circles, text, blocks, and dimensions — organized on named layers, together with drawing metadata and viewport settings. It is a closed, proprietary binary format that changes across AutoCAD releases, so reading it reliably requires licensed technology: GeoConvert uses the Open Design Alliance (ODA) engine, the same technology major CAD vendors build on. Converting DWG to GIS formats extracts the geometry and layer structure into features you can style and analyze.
What is GPX?
GPX (GPS Exchange Format) is an open, XML-based schema for exchanging GPS data such as waypoints, routes, and tracks between devices and applications.
GPX models data through three primary elements: waypoints (individual named points of interest), routes (an ordered list of routepoints describing a planned path), and tracks (recorded paths made of one or more segments of trackpoints, often carrying timestamps and elevation). It is the common tongue of handheld GPS units, fitness watches, and outdoor apps like Garmin, Strava, and Komoot. It is a point- and line-oriented format built around navigation, not a general-purpose polygon or attribute-table format.
Coordinate systems
Like DXF, a DWG drawing carries no coordinate reference system — coordinates are plain model units in whatever local or projected system the drawing was authored in. Converting to GIS usually means assigning the correct source CRS so the geometry lands in the right place on the map.
The GPX specification fixes all coordinates to WGS84 latitude/longitude with elevation in meters, so like KML it carries no projection information and any exported data is expressed in EPSG:4326.