CDX files are created with CorelDRAW, a vector editor created and sold by the Canadian Corel Corporation headquartered in Ottawa. The latest version of the program (X6) was released in March 2012 and runs only on Microsoft Windows.

The CDX file format is proprietary (there is no CDX file format specification publicly available) and it's used by Corel as the default for archiving images. CDX files contain compressed CDR images and are used for faster file transfer and smaller file sizes.

CDR is the default COREL output format and can store simple drawings and vector images. Can also store data used by CorelDraw such as nodes, layers or segments.