Gregory's Serverso i have a 20-year-old drawing file i wanted to look at today. but i didn't recognize the file extension (axd) and there was no file association. what to do? 🧵
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 @tubetime and it probably doesn't help that it shares extension with some sort of visual studio file. I went to my old stand by, but can't help: https://fileinfo.com/extension/axd ok, so i added a bunch of search terms and it turns out it is the drawing file format used by a product called Actrix. naturally, as a failed Autodesk product, it's a proprietary binary format. they never released a translator or a spec. oh no, OLE automation. this is some sort of cursed Windows C++ OLE automation serialized object nonsense. wait that gives me an idea, this reminds me vaguely of what Altium did with their file format. so i think it would be easier to track down a copy of the software and install it on an old PC, then save it as some other format, rather than trying to reverse engineer this mountain of binary garbage. there are three lessons here: @tubetime @tubetime I'd probably run this in a VM since its possible that it could have some unsavory additions... 
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@tubetime I found this dude that has a copy and was willing to translate files you e-mail him, lol. https://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/11/got-axd-files-we-got-actrix-2000-for-translation.html @tubetime If you don’t mind e-mailing your AXD files to someone named Ralph Grabowski, they’ll get converted to DWGs and sent back to you: https://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/11/got-axd-files-we-got-actrix-2000-for-translation.html @tubetime That's probably the best thing to do.   @tubetime read the last reply here, a 12-year-old StackOverflow thread asking the same thing https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5879824/what-is-an-axd-file @tubetime kagi gives me for “drawing file .axd” this link on position 3: <https://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/11/got-axd-files-we-got-actrix-2000-for-translation.html> - i think it's time to reconsider google…    First thing I do when encountering a file of unknown format is to feed it to the  @tubetime At least 3 years ago this guy had a copy running under Windows7 and was willing to convert axd files to dwg . https://www.worldcadaccess.com/blog/2015/11/got-axd-files-we-got-actrix-2000-for-translation.html |
maybe a google search? nope, no right answers on the first page. or the second page. in fact, the results are flooded with websites claiming to decode file extensions.
i think my favorite description so far is "AXD files are typically a type of binary file used by certain software, and many software packages can share a common file extension. In the case of files..."