A CDF file is an interactive document saved in the Computable Document Format (CDF), a document standard developed by Wolfram Research. It may contain text, visual elements, such as interactive graphs or images, Wolfram Language input or output, and page formatting information. Wolfram discontinued the CDF format in 2021 in favor of the interactive Mathematica Notebook (.NB) format.
Various types of Wolfram software users, such as teachers, scientists, and publishers, may save documents as CDF files. Typically, they open the files with Wolfram Research Player or Mathematica when displaying business presentations, reading journal articles, or interacting with e-learning materials such as textbooks and tutorials. The format also allows users to load visualization data on-demand from within the CDF file.
You can open CDF files with Wolfram Research Player and Wolfram Research Mathematica in Windows, macOS, and Linux. To open a CDF file with either application, select File → Open .
Wolfram Research Mathematica can convert CDF files to various file types, including the following formats:
File created by the CryENGINE SDK, a program suite used for building games for PC and console platforms; saves a reference to the character file (.CHR or .CGF) as well as attachments; used in the process of constructing virtual characters for the target game.
File create in the Common Data Format (CDF), a format used for storing scalar and multidimensional data in a manner independent of the target platform and discipline; used as a scientific data storage and interchange format by various researchers and organizations and often by those in government.
Common Data Format files can be manipulated using the CDF software toolkit provided by the Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF), a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The software is cross-platform.
The Common Data Format is supported with interfaces to programming languages such as C, Fortran, C#, Perl, Java. It is also supported by commercial software packages such as MathWorks MATLAB, ITT Visual Information Solutions' Interactive Display Language (IDL), and Weisang FlexPro.
The CDF format has been adopted as a standard format by organizations such as the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) project and the Central Data Handling Facilities (CDHF) project, a scientific data processing entity.
NOTE: The CDF format differs from the NetCDF format, which is based on CDF but uses slightly different conventions. Sometimes NetCDF files use the ".cdf" extension, but the format is incompatible.
