Micrografx Draw

File Format
Name	Micrografx Draw
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Graphics Micrografx Draw
Extension(s)	.drw, .drt, .ds4, .dsf
PRONOM	x-fmt/47, x-fmt/294, x-fmt/295, x-fmt/296, x-fmt/151
Wikidata ID	Q52059869
Released	1986

Micrografx Draw (or Micrografx Designer Drawing, or Windows Draw Drawing) is a family of vector graphics formats native to the Micrografx Designer (originally Micrografx In*A*Vision, later Corel Designer, also released in some form as Windows Draw) software for Microsoft Windows.

File extensions .ds4 and .dsf were used by later versions of the software. [TODO: Do these represent newer versions of the same format, or what?]

File extension .drt was used for templates. (Is this supposed to be DST?)

Micrografx Draw format seems to be well-known in vector graphics communities, but technical documentation about it is elusive. A dedicated researcher could presumably learn about it from the Scribus source code.

History

Micrografx was acquired by Corel in 2001, and the Micrografx division was renamed iGrafx. Micrografx Designer was briefly released as Corel Designer, but versions of Corel Designer after 9.x are not based on Micrografx Designer.

Identification

• .DRW files begin with 01 ff 02 04 03.
• .DS4 & .MGX files are based on the RIFF format
• .DSF & .DST files are based on "OLE2" document container format.

Screenshots

Software

• Scribus
• Corel Designer

Sample files

• Micrografx Windows Draw (CD image from archive.org) → WINDRAW_4.ISO → CLIPART/.../*.DRW
• http://cd.textfiles.com/pier/pier01/004a/mgxclip.zip
• Draw 5.0 ISO with DRW Samples
• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/image/micrografxDraw/

Links

• Wikipedia: Corel Designer
• Wikipedia: Micrografx
• iGrafx website