PL Viewer opens legacy PL1/PL2 survey drawings, the paired binary files from DOS-era coordinate geometry systems of the 80s and 90s, directly in your browser and converts them to clean AutoCAD DXF.
What it does
Drop a PL1/PL2 pair and pan, zoom and rotate the drawing with its original layers, pen colors and line types. Toggle layers on and off with per-layer entity counts. Export an R12-compatible DXF, verified by a built-in syntax checker before download, or use batch mode to convert a whole folder into a single ZIP with a progress bar and per-file report.
CRD files
PL Viewer now reads the coordinate database (CRD) that accompanied PL files. Drop the CRD next to your PL1/PL2 pair and the viewer resolves lines and arcs that reference survey points by number, geometry that is silently missing otherwise. On my test archives this recovers hundreds of entities per sheet.
Desktop version
PL Viewer is also available as a native Windows application. Same converter, same verified DXF output, running entirely offline.
The installer registers the .pl1 and .pl2 file associations, so legacy plot files open straight into the viewer by double click. Export DXF and Batch ZIP write through the standard Windows save dialog. Nothing leaves your machine, no browser required.
Download: PLViewer-2.8.0-setup.exe
Try it online: chernitsky.net/pl-viewer