QLD Globe is the best free property viewer in the country. It is also the source of a lot of wasted time, because people assume that a tool showing them cadastre, contours and easements must be able to hand those layers over. It cannot, at least not in the format a CAD user wants.
What “Export” actually does in QLD Globe
There are two export functions, and neither produces a DXF.
Export map. This renders the current view to an image. It is a picture. You can print it or paste it in a report, and that is all.
Export data. This exports places you have drawn yourself using the drawing tools. The state help page lists the formats as Shapefile, KML, JSON and CSV, with a cap of 1000 features and a 10 MB file. It does not export the layers you have turned on. If you switched on 1 m contours and the cadastre and hit export, you get your drawn markup, not the contours.
The reason is licensing and load. The underlying layers are published separately through QSpatial and the ArcGIS REST services, and the Globe is a viewer over them.
What people actually want
When someone searches “qld globe dxf” they are usually a surveyor, building designer or civil engineer who needs one of:
- the lot boundary for a site plan
- contours for a preliminary drainage or earthworks layout
- easement lines from the plan
- building footprints for a context drawing
All of that exists in the state data. The gap is between “visible in a browser” and “on a named layer in metres in my drawing”.
The manual route
If you want to do it yourself, the path is:
- Go to QSpatial and find the dataset (Cadastral data, Contours 1 metre, Building outlines).
- Order a clip by LGA or suburb. Wait for the email.
- Load the shapefile into QGIS.
- Select the lot, or clip by a polygon you draw around it.
- Set the project CRS to a projected system such as MGA2020 zone 56 so the export is in metres.
- Export the layer as DXF. Check that contour elevations came through as text, which usually needs a label export step.
- Open in CAD and verify units and scale.
Budget an hour the first time and fifteen minutes once it is routine. Multiply by the number of sites you scope each month.
The direct route
PlanInsight pulls from the same Queensland ArcGIS services, but per lot. Search an address, confirm the lot on plan, and download a DXF with the boundary, parcel label, building footprints, contours with elevation labels, watercourses and water bores already clipped to the lot and converted to metres. The file is DXF R12, which every CAD package reads.
You can try the boundary layer for free with no login. The full layered file comes with any plan.
What else is on the same screen
Because the DXF is generated from the title record, the same property page shows the things you would otherwise open QLD Globe and three other tabs for:
- lot on plan, real property description, area in m², tenure and surveyed status
- planning zone and overlays, including flood, bushfire and easements
- live and historical development applications for the lot in supported councils
- a one-click link to the registered survey plan via ePlan
- current QLD land valuation
That is most of a desktop study before you have opened a single portal. The consulting engineers page has the full workflow.
When you still need QLD Globe
QLD Globe remains the right tool for browsing. Looking across a region, checking a mining tenure, reading a planning scheme overlay you do not recognise, or measuring something informally are all faster in the Globe. Use it for looking. Use a per-lot export for drawing.