Convert an ODG Drawing to PDF

Converting an .odg file — an OpenDocument drawing from LibreOffice Draw — to PDF is a near-lossless translation, because both formats describe graphics the same way: as vector paths, fills, and positioned text. Every shape, Bezier curve, connector, and label exports as native PDF drawing operators that stay sharp at any zoom and print at full resolution. This page covers the export from Draw, page sizing for multi-page drawings, selection-only export for single diagrams, and the batch command line.

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Why there is no one-click converter on this page

Rendering an .odg requires the Draw engine's shape geometry, connector routing, and style model, which browsers do not expose to local pages. Since LibreOffice is free and is the format's native renderer, the reliable route is its own export, shown below.

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How to convert an ODG to PDF (step by step)

Method 1 — LibreOffice Draw's Export as PDF

  1. Open the .odg in LibreOffice Draw, its native application; the drawing renders exactly as it was authored.
  2. Open Slide → Slide Properties (or Page → Page Properties, depending on version) and confirm the page size and orientation — each Draw page becomes one PDF page at exactly that size.
  3. Choose File → Export As → Export as PDF; on the General tab set the range to All, or Selection to export only the selected shapes.
  4. Set image compression to Lossless for any embedded bitmaps, keep Tagged PDF on, and click Export.

Method 2 — Selection-only export for a single diagram

  1. Select the shapes that make up the diagram (rubber-band or Ctrl-click).
  2. File → Export As → Export as PDF, tick Selection, and export.

The PDF page is sized to the selection's bounding box — ideal for dropping a tightly-cropped vector figure into LaTeX (\includegraphics) or a print workflow, with no margins to trim.

Method 3 — Headless batch conversion

soffice --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir ./out floor-plan.odg
soffice --headless --convert-to pdf --outdir ./out *.odg

Each file converts with its saved page sizes; a 90-sheet technical drawing set becomes 90 correctly-sized PDF pages per file with no window ever opening.

How it works

An .odg is a ZIP archive whose content.xml describes each page as a list of draw elements — rectangles, ellipses, polylines, Bezier paths, connectors, text frames — with coordinates in real-world units (centimeters or inches) and styles referenced from styles.xml. This is the same graphics model PDF uses: paths built from line and curve segments, painted with stroke and fill parameters, in a coordinate space measured in physical units (points, at 72 per inch). Conversion is therefore mostly a coordinate transform: a 10 cm line at 0.5 pt width in Draw becomes a moveto/lineto/stroke sequence in the PDF content stream — no rasterization, no resolution, no quality loss.

Text in shapes stays real text: Draw embeds subset fonts and positions glyph runs, so labels in the PDF remain selectable and searchable. Draw-specific niceties are resolved at export: connectors are written as their computed routed paths, dimension lines as their constituent lines, arrowheads, and measurement text, and smart shapes as plain paths. Layers flatten into z-ordered page content, with non-printable layers omitted entirely. The only content that is raster in the output is content that was raster in the input — embedded photos or scans — which the export dialog compresses with JPEG or losslessly, at your choice.

The one transformation worth knowing about is transparency flattening. Regular PDF and PDF/A-2 support real alpha transparency, so overlapping translucent shapes export intact. PDF/A-1, an older archival profile, forbids transparency, so choosing it forces Draw to flatten affected regions into raster patches — the single common way a "vector" export acquires pixels.

Worked example: a three-page office floor plan

Test file: office-floorplan.odg, 187 KB — three A3 landscape pages (ground floor, first floor, electrical), roughly 640 objects in total: walls as polylines, 42 dimension lines, room labels in Liberation Sans, furniture symbols grouped from Bezier shapes, and one embedded 2.1 MB PNG site photo on page 1. Export as PDF with lossless image compression produced office-floorplan.pdf, 1.4 MB, three A3 pages: every wall line measured exactly to scale in the PDF (a 5.40 m wall = 15.3 cm on the A3 page, verified with a PDF measuring tool), text remained selectable, and zooming to 6400% showed no pixelation anywhere except inside the site photo itself. Re-exporting with JPEG quality 90 for the photo cut the file to 411 KB with no visible change at print size. A selection-only export of just the ground-floor kitchen area yielded a 48 KB single-page PDF sized 14.2 × 9.8 cm — dropped straight into a LaTeX report without cropping.

Frequently asked questions

Does ODG to PDF keep the drawing as scalable vectors?

Yes, shapes, Bezier curves, connectors and text in an .odg export as native PDF vector operators, so the drawing stays perfectly sharp at any zoom and prints at full printer resolution. Only embedded bitmap images stay raster, at whatever compression you choose in the export dialog.

How do multi-page ODG drawings come out in the PDF?

Each Draw page becomes one PDF page at exactly the drawn page size, in order, so a three-page drawing gives a three-page PDF. Objects placed off the page edge are clipped in the PDF even though Draw shows them on the canvas.

Can I export just one selected object instead of the whole page?

Yes, select the shapes, choose File, Export As, Export as PDF, and set the range to Selection; the PDF page is sized to the selection's bounding box. This is the cleanest way to hand a single diagram to a print shop or embed it in LaTeX.

Should I export my ODG drawing to PDF or SVG?

Both keep vectors: choose PDF for printing, sharing and fixed page sizes, and SVG for embedding in web pages or further editing in vector tools like Inkscape. PDF also handles multi-page drawings, which SVG cannot represent in one file.

What happens to layers and hidden objects in the exported PDF?

Layers marked not printable, and anything on them, are left out of the PDF, while visible printable layers are flattened into the page content. Draw's Layout, Controls and Dimension Lines layers can each be toggled printable in the layer's properties before export.

Why do my ODG gradients or transparency look banded in PDF/A?

PDF/A-1 forbids live transparency, so LibreOffice flattens transparent objects and smooth gradients into raster regions, which can band or blur. Export as PDF/A-2 or a regular PDF instead; both support real transparency and keep gradients smooth.

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