First, compound OLE documents can slow down performance--sometimes a lot. Second, supporting OLE well is a difficult programming job, and many applications, including AutoCAD LT, suffer from OLE design limitations and bugs. Third, getting consistent hard-copy output can be tricky, especially when you plot from AutoCAD LT. OLE objects that look fine on the screen often undergo amazingly creative but not necessarily desirable transformations when they come out on paper. In my experience, the potential benefits of using OLE with AutoCAD LT just aren't worth all the pitfalls and limitations that you have to work around.

The WMF file includes a vector representation that's fairly faithful to the graphics in the AutoCAD LT DWG file, which also uses a vector format. (A vector format stores graphics as collections of geometrical objects, such as lines, polygons, and text. Vector graphics are good for high geometrical precision and for stretching or squeezing images to different sizes. These two characteristics make vector formats especially suitable for CAD.) Many other Windows programs, including Microsoft Word, do a decent job of importing WMF files. I've found WMF to be the most reliable and efficient way to transfer drawing graphics to a Word document.

For one thing, most CAD drawings turn into monstrously large BMP files. As an example, I opened a small 100KB DWG file showing a simple house plan and exported it to both WMF and BMP formats. The exported WMF file was about the same size as the DWG file, while the exported BMP file was over 2 MB! Another problem is that BMP is a raster (or bit-map) format. A raster format stores graphics as a series of little dots, or pixels. Raster graphics are good for depicting photographic detail and lots of colors, but not so good for most CAD drawings.

From LT to Word
  Page 1: Introduction and exchange acronyms
  Page 2: Creating a WMF in AutoCAD LT
  Page 3: WMF file preparation
  Page 4: WMF process details
  Page 5: Placing a WMF file in a Word document