PCF Converter

Extract text from PCF files


Drop or upload your .PCF file
✈

How to extract text from your PCF file

  1. Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PCF file.
  2. You’ll see a preview, if available.
  3. Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert PCF to another file type

To convert your PCF file to another format, you need Source Filmmaker or other Game software.

  • PCF to PPG
  • PCF to PSF
  • PCF to PCI
  • PCF to PSI
  • PCF to SG
  • PCF to CSV
  • PCF to JSON
  • PCF to XML
  • PCF to YAML
  • PCF to YML
  • PCF to TOML
  • PCF to INI

Convert a file to PCF

To convert other file formats to the "Particle System & Piping Data" file type, you need software like Source Filmmaker or a similar tool.

  • DBF to PCF
  • XML to PCF
  • SQLITE to PCF
  • XLSX to PCF
  • SQL to PCF
  • TSV to PCF
  • ACCDB to PCF
  • YAML to PCF
  • MDB to PCF
  • CSV to PCF
  • ODS to PCF
  • JSON to PCF

About PCF files

The .pcf extension represents a collision of three distinct file formats, creating significant confusion for users.

  1. Valve Source Particle System: In gaming and modding, this file defines atmospheric effects (smoke, fire, explosions) for the Valve Source Engine. These are used in games like Team Fortress 2 and tools like Source Filmmaker. These files are often binary or proprietary containers that cannot be edited with standard text editors, creating friction for modders who need to tweak particle properties. Users typically need to convert or decompile these into editable DMX or XML formats using tools like Valve Hammer Editor.
  2. ISOGEN Piping Component File: In industrial engineering, a .pcf file is a text-based format used by Hexagon (formerly Intergraph) software and AutoCAD Plant 3D to describe pipe spools and isometric data. While technically human-readable, the raw data is dense and unstructured for casual viewing. Engineers frequently need to convert this data into CSV or XLSX (Excel) to generate Bill of Materials (BOMs) or material take-offs without requiring a $4,000+ CAD license.
  3. X11 Portable Compiled Font: On Unix/Linux systems, this is a legacy bitmap font format. Modern operating systems (Windows/macOS) and design software like Adobe Illustrator do not natively support these bitmap fonts. To use these retro-style fonts in modern designs, users must convert them to scalable OTF or TTF vector formats.

Convert.Guru analyzes your PCF file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted DOCX, PDF, NCF, TF2, COMPOSITEFONT, JPG, SHA, PFC, PCX, ZIP, VCF, DMX and XLSX files.



The PCF 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 PCF converter.