Vector File Formats Explained: A Practical Map

Send an SVG to a laser cutter and it works. Send the same SVG to an embroidery machine and nothing happens. Send a DST to Illustrator and it opens as a pile of ungrouped line segments with no colour. The formats are not competing flavours of the same thing — they encode different information, and some of them discard almost everything about how the artwork looked.

The most useful way to organise the landscape is by asking two questions of any format: does it store geometry, and does it store appearance? Everything else — which software opens it, what the extension means, whether it is text or binary — follows from those two answers.

The master map

Here is the whole set on one page. Read it as a table of capabilities, not a ranking.

Three families, not one

Look at the appearance column and the split becomes obvious. SVG, PDF, EPS and AI are presentation formats — they carry geometry and describe how to paint it. DXF, DST and PES are process formats — they carry geometry in a form a specific machine can execute, and appearance is either reduced to a token (a layer name, a thread number) or discarded. STL, 3MF and G-code are manufacturing formats, where geometry becomes a mesh or a toolpath.

Conversion within a family is usually lossless or close to it. Conversion across families is where information disappears, and knowing which direction loses what prevents most unpleasant surprises.

The presentation formats: SVG, PDF, EPS, AI

These four are the ones a designer works in. They share a geometry model based on paths and Bézier curves and they all care about how the result looks.

SVG is the web-native one. XML, CSS-styleable, resolution independent, and the only one of the four that a browser renders natively. Its weakness is print: no CMYK, no spot inks, no bleed or trim boxes. SVG versus PDF covers that gap in detail.

PDF is the print-native one. Page boxes, ICC profiles, embedded fonts, spot colour spaces — everything a press needs. It is the expected delivery format for commercial printing and the most reliable long-term archive for a vector document.

EPS is the legacy print one. PostScript-based, CMYK-capable, universally accepted by older prepress workflows. It predates transparency and has no layer model, and it is still requested by screen printers.

AI is Illustrator's native format. Modern AI files are PDF-compatible, which is why some tools open them at all, but the editable structure — live effects, symbols, artboards, appearance attributes — only reconstructs correctly inside Illustrator. Saving an AI with PDF compatibility enabled produces a file that other programs read as a PDF, which is often what you actually want to send.

What survives between them

Paths, fills, strokes, transforms and clipping generally move cleanly between all four. Gradients move but may be redefined. Transparency moves between PDF and AI, less reliably into EPS. Fonts only move reliably when embedded or outlined. Spot colours survive PDF and EPS, and vanish into SVG.

The process formats: DXF, DST, PES

These carry geometry for a specific class of machine, and each machine imposes its own constraints.

DXF is CAD interchange. Explicit units through $INSUNITS, layers as the organising principle, entities like LINE, ARC, POLYLINE and SPLINE. A DXF is what a laser, plasma table, waterjet or CNC router expects. There are no gradients and no opacity; a colour is a layer index or a true-colour integer.

DST is a Tajima embroidery stitch file. It does not store a design; it stores the order in which the needle enters and leaves the fabric, with jump and trim commands. Colour is not in the format — a DST is read against a machine's thread chart, and the colour order is a convention rather than data. Converting artwork to DST requires a digitizing step that decides stitch type, density, underlay and travel, because a fill path and a satin path produce different stitch sequences from the same outline. Our embroidery file format reference covers the family.

PES is Brother's version of the same idea, with a bit more metadata: thread palette index and some object structure. Still a stitch format, not a vector format, and still unreadable as geometry by a design app.

Why vector-to-embroidery is not a format conversion

Because embroidery is not a printing process. A 20 mm satin column stitches differently from a 20 mm fill, and a letter at 4 mm tall needs different density than the same letter at 40 mm. The conversion from SVG to DST is a digitizing operation with heuristics, not a transcription. Expect to adjust the output.

The manufacturing formats: STL, 3MF, G-code

STL is a triangle soup. Every surface is a mesh of triangles, normals optional, units unspecified. It cannot represent colour, multiple materials, or even a reliable sense of inside and outside for broken meshes. It is universal and minimal.

3MF is the modern replacement: a ZIP archive with XML inside, carrying units, colour, materials, multiple build items, and metadata. Most current slicers prefer it. The difference is covered in 3MF versus STL.

G-code is the finished instruction set. It is not geometry at all — it is a list of moves, feed rates, temperatures and fan speeds for one specific machine. Once you have G-code, the design intent is gone. You cannot meaningfully convert G-code back to a vector; you can only try to reconstruct paths from the toolpath, which is lossy and usually pointless.

Extrusion from a 2D outline — taking a flat logo and giving it height — is the bridge from vector work into this family. SVG to STL extrudes paths into a mesh, and a 3MF export keeps colour and units where STL would discard them.

How to identify what you were given

Extensions lie. A file named logo.ai may be a PDF, a TIFF, or an EPS. A logo.eps can be a PostScript wrapper around a single huge bitmap. Before planning any conversion, inspect the actual content.

Three quick checks work without specialist tools:

• Open it in a text editor. Files starting with <?xml and containing <svg are SVG. Files starting with %PDF are PDF. Files starting with %!PS are PostScript, usually EPS. Files starting with PK are ZIP containers — which could be 3MF, or a modern AI or Office document.
• Zoom in far. If edges stay sharp, it is vector. If they break into blocks, there is a raster inside, possibly hiding under vector clothing.
• Count colours in the relevant region. A logo that should have three colours and shows anti-aliased thousands is a raster trace, not clean art.

The single most common failure

It is the bitmap wearing a vector extension. A designer exports a JPEG to a file named .eps, a client sends it along, and everyone downstream assumes it is vector until someone tries to scale it. Every conversion attempt then produces soft, fuzzy output because the source never had vector data in it.

The fix is to trace it properly first. PNG to SVG is the usual entry point, and how tracing works explains what the output will and will not be.

Choosing deliberately

Ask what the next consumer is before picking a format. A browser wants SVG. A press wants PDF. A laser wants DXF or SVG. An embroidery machine wants DST or PES. A slicer wants 3MF or STL. There is no universal export, and a file that opens everywhere usually compromises the thing its consumer needed most.

Where two work, pick the one that stores more information. SVG over DXF for design masters, because SVG retains appearance and DXF does not. PDF over EPS for anything with transparency. 3MF over STL for anything multicolour. Keeping the richer file as the master means you can always regenerate the poorer one.

For the detailed reference version of this map, see the Vectorr file format reference. Our SVG versus DXF comparison goes deeper on the geometry-versus-presentation split that drives most unit bugs.