drawingtotext is a command line utility that extracts any text from DWG/DXF files.
Usage: drawingtotext inputfile outputfile[optional]

The input file must be a DWG or DXF file. The output file must be a .txt file. If the output file is not specified the results are sent out to the console.

Dependencies
-----------------------
- libreDWG & dxflib (how to install explained below)
- build-essential
- autoconf
- libtool
- python-dev
- swig
- texinfo

How to install LibreDWG
-----------------------
git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/libredwg.git
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install autoconf
sudo apt-get install libtool
sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo apt-get install swig
sudo apt-get install texinfo
cd libredwg
sh autogen.sh
./configure --enable-trace
make
sudo make install
make check
(these steps are mostly taken from http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibreDWG)


How to install dxflib
-----------------------
From the project directory...
cd dxflib
./configure && make && sudo make install


Once you've installed dxflib and LibreDWG, back up to the project directory and run "make".
This should make an execuable file named drawingtotext.

If you get a error about linking shared library LibreDWG run this command
ldconfig

Move drawingtotext to /usr/local/bin (mv drawingtotext /usr/local/bin) so it can be accessed via the command line from anywhere.
	- Down the road we will hopefully modify the makefile to have an install command.



Misc
-----------------------
This is mainly just a copy of the text extraction process from the following code:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-autocad/#download

The code could probably have a lot of lines(and maybe whole files) removed, I haven't really gone through everything yet so I don't know what's required for the text extraction and what's not.