Extract text from BDC files
To convert your BDC file to another format, you need West Point Bridge Designer or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Simulation Project File" file type, you need software like West Point Bridge Designer or a similar tool.
The .bdc extension represents a split ecosystem, most commonly serving as a simulation project file for West Point Bridge Designer (WPBD) or a compressed glossary for Babylon translation software.
For engineering students and educators, the WPBD .bdc file contains the geometry, material assignments, and load-test data of a bridge structure. The main friction point is version usage; files created in older 2016 versions of the software often fail to open in newer iterations, and the format is completely proprietary - meaning you cannot directly import it into professional CAD tools like AutoCAD or SolidWorks. Users needing to present their designs outside the specific WPBD environment typically resort to "converting" via a virtual printer to generate a PDF or taking PNG screenshots of the load simulation.
In the context of linguistics, the .bdc format acts as a compiled dictionary source for Babylon. These files are often locked containers, making it difficult for translators to migrate their terminology databases to open-source dictionary viewers like GoldenDict. Converting these requires specialized extraction utilities to parse the binary container into standard TXT, CSV, or XDXF formats for broader compatibility.
Convert.Guru analyzes your BDC file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted BCD, DBC, BD4, RESOURCE and LFS files.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our BDC converter.