Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your DES file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert DES to another file type
To convert DES designs to another format, you need Corel DESIGNER or other Vector Image software.
Convert a file to DES
To convert other file formats to the "Technical Illustration & CAD" file type, you need software like Corel DESIGNER or a similar tool.
About DES files
The .DES file extension is an overloaded format used by dozens of unrelated software applications. Most frequently, it acts as a proprietary technical illustration graphic created by Corel DESIGNER. In other engineering environments, it serves as a 3D CAD design file for CoCreate OneSpace Designer or SolidWorks. It is also commonly found as an anti-cheat component for nProtect GameGuard or a form layout template for Intuit QuickBooks. Because the .DES extension is highly fragmented, identifying its actual content is challenging. These formats are heavily proprietary and closed-source. A Corel DESIGNER graphic, for example, cannot be natively viewed in standard web browsers or standard image editors without an expensive subscription to software like CorelDRAW. Furthermore, CAD variants of .DES files often exceed large file sizes and require heavy workstation software to render. For design sharing, converting .DES to PDF, SVG, or DXF is highly recommended to preserve vector geometry, though complex 3D metadata and layered attributes will often be lost. Rasterizing the graphic to JPG or PNG is ideal for quick web viewing and broad compatibility. The overlapping software ecosystem makes .DES files notoriously difficult to open or convert. Generic online converters consistently fail because they misidentify the file's internal structure, which could be a ZIP archive, an executable, a RIFF file, or a Microsoft Compound container. Often, only the original authoring software can properly read or export the geometric data. Our analyzer inspects the internal hex headers to definitively identify whether it is a graphic, a 3D CAD drawing, or a text-based script. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, viewing or conversion may still be possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your DES file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert DES file to OBJ, FBX, DAE, 3DS, MAX, BLEND, MA, MB, C4D, STL, PLY or WRL, you can use Corel DESIGNER or similar software from the "Technical Graphic & CAD Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DWG, DAE, X3D, IGES, WRL, JT, SKP, 3DS, 3DM, OBJ, STEP or FBX files to DES, try Corel DESIGNER or another comparable tool in the "Technical Graphic & CAD Storage" category.
The DES Converter Story
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 DES converter.