cad

126 Articles

New Browser-based CAD System Is Best Friends With Triangle Meshes

December 4, 2025 by 41 Comments

Who’s interested in a brand new, from-scratch boundary representation (BREP) kernel? How about one that has no topological naming problem, a web-native parametric CAD front end to play with, and has CAD-type operations making friends with triangle meshes? If you’re intrigued, check out [mmiscool]’s BREP project.

Functioning (let alone feature-filled, or efficient) CAD systems are not a software project we see a whole lot of. Ones that represent models as genuine BREP structures but cleverly use mesh-based operations where it makes sense? Even less so.

In theory, CAD programs are simple: allow a user to define features, keep track of what they are and how they relate to one another, and perform operations on them as requested. In practice, it’s significant work. Chains of operations and dependencies easily become complex, volatile things and there is really no room for error.

Read [Arya Voronova]’s best practices for using FreeCAD to get a few hints as to what goes on behind the scenes in a modern CAD program, and the kinds of challenges the back end has to deal with, like the topological naming problem (TNP). A problem [mmiscool]’s implementation completely avoids, by the way.

There is a live demo at BREP.io which acts as a playground for the state of the project. You can get started by clicking the + button towards the top on the left panel to add features and operations to the history (like add a cube, then add chamfers or fillets, or extrude a face, and so on).

[mmiscool] points out that all computation is done client-side; even complex operations like fillets, lofts, and multi-body booleans execute directly in the browser with no need to be offloaded to a back end. BREP’s development is being documented on Hackaday.io and there is a video embedded below that gives an overview. Why don’t you give it a spin?

Continue reading “New Browser-based CAD System Is Best Friends With Triangle Meshes” →

How To Design 3D Printed Pins That Won’t Break

December 1, 2025 by 9 Comments

[Slant 3D] has a useful video explaining some thoughtful CAD techniques for designing 3D printed pins that don’t break and the concepts can be extended to similar features.

Sure, one can make pins stronger simply by upping infill density or increasing the number of perimeters, but those depend on having access to the slicer settings. If someone else is printing a part, that part’s designer has no actual control over these things. So how can one ensure sturdier pins without relying on specific print settings? [Slant 3D] covers two approaches.

The first approach includes making a pin thick, making it short (less leverage for stress), and adding a fillet to the sharp corner where the pin meets the rest of the part. Why? Because a rounded corner spreads stress out, compared to a sharp corner.

Continue reading “How To Design 3D Printed Pins That Won’t Break” →

MicroCAD Programs CAD

November 26, 2025 by 40 Comments

We love and hate OpenSCAD. As programmers, we like describing objects we want to 3D print or otherwise model. As programmers, we hate all the strange things about OpenSCAD that make it not like a normal programming language. Maybe µCAD (or Microcad) is the answer. This new entry in the field lets you build things programmatically and is written in Rust.

In fact, the only way to get it right now is to build it from source using cargo. Assuming you already have Rust, that’s not hard. Simply enter: cargo install microcad. If you don’t already have Rust, well, then that’s a problem. However, we did try to build it, and despite having the native library libmanifold available, Rust couldn’t find it. You might have better luck.

Continue reading “MicroCAD Programs CAD” →

ABCCAD Is Voxels Meets LEGO In AR

November 6, 2025 by 4 Comments

We get it, CAD software can be daunting to learn. Somehow [Boaztheostrich] found it so daunting he procrastinated his way into a AR voxel-based CAD app he calls “ABCCAD”, written in Godot for the Meta Quest 3.

The app is simplicity itself: pressing A or X on the controller spawns a cube, which you can place wherever you like in virtual space by moving the controller in real space. The trigger then saves the cube position. Grabbing a cube uses the controller’s grab buttons. You can even change colors (with B or Y), but like in OpenSCAD it appears that’s not actually going to have any effect on the exported STL. Check it out in action in the demo video embedded below.

As far as CAD applications go, this is as simplistic as it gets, but there’s a certain charm to its simplicity. It’s almost like virtual LEGO. Besides, TinkerCAD wasn’t much more complicated when it started out, and look at it now.

Sure, one could say if [Boaz] wanted to do CAD he’d have been better off putting the time into learning good old OpenSCAD or FreeCAD (which can now get you SolidWorks certs, apparently), but this is a fun little app that let him stretch his chops in Godot, another great open-source tool. ABCCAD is, itself, open-source under an MIT license.

We seem to have a paucity of posts under the Godot tag, so if you’ve got a hack that uses the open-source game engine, please send us a tip.

Continue reading “ABCCAD Is Voxels Meets LEGO In AR” →

What If Tinkercad Was Self-Hosted?

October 25, 2025 by 31 Comments

While we use a lot of CAD tools, many of us are fans of Tinkercad — especially for working with kids or just doing something quick. But many people dislike having to work across the Internet with their work stored on someone’s servers. We get it. So does [CommonWealthRobotics], which offers CaDoodle. It is nearly a total clone of Tinkercad but runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, or even Chrome OS.

Is it exactly Tinkercad? No, but that’s not always a bad thing. For example, CaDoodle can work with Blender, FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, and more. However, on the business end, it sure looks like the core functions of Tinkercad.

The program appears fairly new, so you have to make some allowances. For example, the Linux AppImage seems to have difficulty loading plugins (which it needs to import many of its file formats). In addition, on at least some systems, you have to resize the window after it starts, or it won’t respond. But, overall, it is pretty impressive. The Settings, by the way, has a checkbox for advanced features, and there are some other goodies there, too.

One reason we found this interesting is that we sometimes go into schools, and they don’t want us to have kids on the Internet. Of course, they don’t like us installing random software either, so you can pick your battles.

Tinkercad, of course, continues to add features. Not all of which you’d expect in a drawing package.

Tinkercad Continues To Grow Up

October 21, 2025 by 21 Comments

It is easy to write off Tinkercad as a kid’s toy. It is easy enough for kids to learn and it uses bright colors looking more like a video game than a CAD tool. We use a variety of CAD tools, but for something quick, sometimes Tinkercad is just the ticket. Earlier this year, Tinkercad got a sketch feature, something many other CAD programs have and, now, you can even revolve the sketch to form complex objects. Tinkercad guru [HL ModTech] shows you how in the video below.

It wasn’t long ago that we needed to cut an irregular shape out of an STL and we found the sketch feature which was perfect for that purpose. If you’ve used other CAD tools, you’ll know that sketches are typically 2D shapes that get changed into a 3D shape. The traditional thing is to simply extrude it, so if you draw a circle in 2D, you get a cylinder.

Continue reading “Tinkercad Continues To Grow Up” →

Reverse Engineering STL Files With FreeCAD

October 21, 2025 by 30 Comments

If you think about it, STL files are like PDF files. You usually create them using some other program, export them, and then expect them to print. But you rarely do serious editing on a PDF or an STL. But what if you don’t have anything but the STL? [The Savvy Engineer] has a method to help you if you need to reverse engineer an STL file in FreeCAD. Check it out in the video below.

The problem is, of course, that STLs are made up of numerous little triangles. The trick is to switch workbenches and create a shape from mesh. That gets you part of the way.

Once you have a shape, you can convert it to a solid. At that point, you can create a refined copy. This gives you a proper CAD file that you can export to a STEP file. From there, you can use it in FreeCAD or nearly any other CAD package you like to use.

Once you have a proper object, you can easily use it like any other solid body in your CAD program. This is one of those things you won’t need every day, but when you do need it, it’ll come in handy.

Want to up your FreeCAD game? We can help. There are other ways to hack up STL files. You can even import them into TinkerCAD to do simple things, but they still aren’t proper objects.

Continue reading “Reverse Engineering STL Files With FreeCAD” →