DWG Compare highlights objects that were modified, added, or removed between two drawings, color-coded and grouped into change sets, working entirely inside model space on DWG files. By Autodesk's own documentation, it does not read schedules, specifications, or which of two conflicting drawings is the one the team intends to use.
What Autodesk's documentation says DWG Compare does
Per AutoCAD's own help page (accessed 2026-09-14), the command "provides a way to perform a visual comparison between two drawings or two revisions of a drawing." Objects common to both drawings appear gray, objects only in the comparison drawing appear red, and objects only in the current drawing appear green; differences are grouped into "change sets" and marked with revision clouds.
| What it does | What it does not do |
|---|---|
| Compares two DWG files, or two revisions of one, in model space | Works with DWG files only |
| Color-codes added, removed, and unchanged geometry | Does not support OLE objects, cameras, geographic data, Map 3D GIS objects, non-DWG underlays, images, coordination models, or point clouds |
| Groups differences into change sets with revision clouds | Cannot compare a comparison result against a third drawing |
That is a geometry-and-object comparison inside one drawing file. Autodesk's page does not describe reading a schedule, a specification, or a note as data — DWG Compare shows what moved, not what the move means to another document.
Two schedules can both be technically unchanged, and still disagree
DWG Compare answers "what changed between these two DWGs." It has nothing to say about which of two current, unrevised documents actually governs when they conflict.
In Groundbook's published mixed-use review, the governing-revision finding was exactly this: two structural schedules carried different requirements, and the set did not clearly establish which version governed or update the downstream references. A DWG-to-DWG compare would show each schedule as internally unchanged; it would not resolve which one the rest of the drawing set should follow.
Where the document-control question gets answered
Use DWG Compare for what it is built for: seeing exactly which objects moved, were added, or were removed inside a drawing file. For which issue governs, and whether the rest of the set was updated to match, use a review that reads the document register and dependent references — cross-discipline coordination — or Groundbook's drawing version comparison workflow, available to beta users on request.
If your files live in Autodesk Docs
Teams on Autodesk Construction Cloud often reach for the cloud-based Compare tool in Autodesk Docs instead of opening two files in desktop AutoCAD. It works on PDFs as well as DWGs and has its own stated scope — see Autodesk Docs: the Compare tool.