layerling README

The project's README from github.com/henmedia/layerling. As one markdown file: README.md.

layerling

Easy 3D CAD for 3D printing

Drop a shape, cut a hole, round an edge, print it. In your browser, with no account and no CAD background.

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layerling in the browser

layerling in the browser

User guide, step by step and with pictures

Who It Is For

You own a 3D printer. You want a part that fits something, not a career in CAD.

layerling works the way you already think: put a shape on the plate, drag it to size, turn a second shape into a hole, group the two, export, print. There is nothing to learn before you start and nothing to sign up for – open the page and build. Your designs stay in your own browser: no account, no cloud, nothing uploaded anywhere.

Coming From Tinkercad?

layerling sits a step beyond Tinkercad towards Fusion 360: it is operated the same way, so you will recognise everything – the plate, the shapes, solids and holes, group and ungroup, bundle, Alt-drag for a copy – but it does not stop where Tinkercad does. Things you have been missing are waiting for you:

Chamfer and fillet. Pick an edge and break it or round it – the one thing people ask for most once a printed part has to feel finished or slot into something. Applied edges stay changeable: take a treatment off again or press Edit to change its value on the same edges.
Hollow, split, sketch, thread. Hollow a body to an even wall, split it with a plane, draw sketches with exact lengths and angles and extrude or revolve them, and add screws, nuts and tapped holes.
Patterns and wrapping. Repeat a shape in a row, circle or spiral, or wrap a pattern or text around a cylinder.
Hole patterns. Click a flat face and spread round, square, rectangular, hexagonal or slot holes over it, in a grid or staggered, with spacing, margin and depth - vents, speaker grilles and baskets in one step.
Scale by percent. Make one or many parts larger or smaller by a percentage - together, so the layout grows with them, or each in place.
Measure and look inside. Tape measure, rulers, a section view that cuts the model open, and a history slider to look back at earlier states.
Real geometry underneath. layerling keeps exact CAD shapes, not just a mesh, so a rounded edge stays a rounded edge – all the way into a STEP file for a full CAD program.

It is not a full CAD package: there is no parametric timeline and no assemblies. And you can run it yourself: install it as an app (it then starts without internet), or host your own copy on Windows, a NAS or a home server – see Getting Started.

An AI can build along with you. layerling ships an MCP server. An AI client such as Gemini, Claude or Codex sees an open editor tab and works in it: add shapes, change measurements, group, cut, round edges, read the scene back, take pictures of the viewport. You describe the part, the AI builds it, you watch it happen and step in whenever you want. This runs locally, with nothing leaving the browser – see layerling MCP Skill for the setup.

What It Does

Building

A real build plate – grid, snapping, handles for moving, resizing and rotating, and a panel with the exact numbers when you need them.
Type a position – the Position card puts a body at exact X, Y and Z, and parts can be parked beside the plate, as in Tinkercad.
Axis arrows – red, green and blue arrows at the plate's front left corner show X, Y and Z the way the numbers count, as in Bambu Studio and OrcaSlicer; they can be switched off in the settings.
Pivot that stays – set a pivot for one body and it stays with that body: it moves, turns and scales with it, is saved, and can be typed as X, Y and Z or dragged with the mouse, snapping to corners and edge midpoints - for hinges and joints.
Light and shadows to taste – shading contrast, shadow strength and softness, and the direction and height of the light, up to straight above as in Tinkercad, all in the settings. A "Tinkercad look" button sets colours, grid and light like there in one go, and the darker grid lines can come every centimetre in a colour of their own.
Fast mode – for slower computers: one switch in the settings turns off shadows, edge lines and the camera's inertia and draws the view at screen resolution; the camera's inertia can also be switched off on its own, so the view stops the moment you let go.
Align faces and see the angles – the Align faces tool brings a face of one part against a face of another, touching or flush, with an optional gap; a turned body shows its angles about X, Y and Z under the selection, and the Rotation card in its settings takes them as numbers.
Snap to other shapes – while moving, a shape locks its edges or centre onto the edges and centres of the shapes around it, with a guide line, so parts sit flush without typing numbers. Alt during the drag pauses it; Shift keeps the move on one axis, and Alt held from the start drags a copy, as in Tinkercad.
Set down on faces – like Cruise in Tinkercad: a new shape lies down on the face under the pointer, sloped ones too, and C picks the selection up and sets it down on another face the same way.
Reference points – right-click a body to mark its centre, corners or edge middles with points that nothing prints and that dragged shapes snap to; drag a point or type its coordinates, and the marks are saved with the design. The tape measure can mark the middle of a measurement - the centre of a round hole, for one.
Interactive Help – press Shift+F1 or the question mark in the Help group, then click any button, field or window: a small window shows the part of the user guide about it and opens it on request.
Command search – press Ctrl+K and type a tool, a shape or a command ("fillet", "mirror", "cylinder") to jump straight to it; it understands English and German words and shows the keyboard shortcuts beside each entry.
History view – look back at any earlier state of the project with a slider, without changing anything; export that state or start a new project from it. By @rmpel.
Millimetres or inches – with Imperial units every measure is shown in inches, as fractions like Tinkercad (1 5/8) or as decimals, the snap grid steps from 1/64 to 1 inch, and the plate's grid is drawn in inches.
Your printer's plate – pick one of more than 220 common printers and the plate takes its size. Its name and build volume show in the corner of the workplane (a switch in the settings hides this and the design's name), and a warning appears when a body reaches past the edge.
Overhangs and filament – "Show overhangs" hatches every face steeper than 45° (or your printer's own angle) that would need supports, and the export window shows volume, weight and metres of filament before you slice.
Shape library – boxes, cylinders, capsules (one end smaller if needed, say for a belt guard), spheres, cones, pyramids, wedges, text, roofs, half spheres, torus shapes, tubes, lofts from one outline to another (say square to round, solid or with a wall, straight or flaring smoothly, twisted or with a tilted top), polygon prisms from three to twenty-four sides, coil springs, a print-in-place hinge, Gridfinity bins and baseplates, knurled grips (straight, crossed or round) and more.
Threads that fit – threaded rods, screws with a socket, countersunk or hex head, hex nuts and tapped holes. M2 to M12, UNC/UNF from #4 to one inch and the Whitworth pipe threads G1/16 to G4 (ISO 228-1) are one pick away, or set your own diameter and pitch, left-hand as well; an inch or G size asks for threads per inch instead of millimetres. The ends take a chamfer, and a tapped hole is a cutter: drop it into a part, group, and the hole comes out threaded.
Gears that mesh – spur, helical, herringbone and bevel gears, ring gears and racks with involute teeth, set by module and number of teeth like a gear generator, with pressure angle and backlash for printing - or with round teeth, forgiving on small printed gears and a smooth grip on knobs. Select two gears and the panel gives the centre distance they mesh at.
Solids and holes – turn shapes into cutters and group them into the final geometry. Edit group (E) lays a group's parts loose to change them and rebuilds it with Done – also a group inside a group, as deep as the design goes.
Multicolor groups – a group can show every part in its own colour, also after holes were cut into it, and a 3MF or OBJ export keeps those colours, so the slicer can map the parts onto filaments.
Bundle – Ctrl+B holds parts together like Tinkercad's bundle: they move, turn and scale as one, but keep their colours and stay separate bodies in the export – handy for multicolour prints.
Intersection – keep only what two or more selected solids have in common, or where solids and holes overlap.
Split – cut solids or holes in two with a plane; a hollowed body keeps its cavity. Turn the plane for an angled cut, drag its arrow, or lay it on any face with "Pick face".

Refining

Chamfer and fillet – break or round any edge of a solid, and remove or change the treatment again later.
Sketches – draw outlines with lines, curves and ready-made shapes, set lines by length and angle as you draw ("50<30", Shift snaps in 15° steps), type lengths, angles and sizes (sums like "60+12.5" work in every number field), round or chamfer corners, snap to the outlines of other bodies, draw construction lines to snap to, and extrude or revolve them into exact bodies. A sketch can also be built as a stroke: a closed outline becomes a frame, inside, outside or centred on the line, and an open line a stripe with flat, square or round ends.
Hollowing – turn a body into walls of one thickness, open on any sides you choose (top, bottom, front, back, left, right, in any combination) or closed – for boxes, cups and cases.
Custom shapes – keep bodies you need again and again at the top of the shape library and insert them into any design with a click or by dragging; in the browser, or with the shared store on the server for every device. "Back up all" takes them along.
Hole pattern – perforate a flat face of a body: pick the face, choose round, square, rectangular, hexagonal or slot holes, set size, spacing, grid or staggered, the margin to the edge and the depth (through the whole part or a set depth), and see the holes as a preview before creating them. They stay ordinary holes grouped with the body, so ungrouping frees them again.
Face – push a flat face of a body out or cut a pocket into it: pick the face, choose Out or In, set an inset from the edge, a corner radius and the depth, and see the result as a preview. It works on imported STLs too, and what it adds stays an ordinary sketch body grouped with the body.
Wrap around a cylinder – lay an SVG pattern, a logo or lettering onto the wall of a cup or tube, raised or engraved, and centre it on the cylinder.

Files

Fonts of your own – use any TrueType, OpenType or WOFF font for text, or in Chrome and Edge a font installed on the computer. A design keeps only the outlines of the letters it uses, so it opens anywhere. Arabic and Hebrew run right to left, Arabic letters join up.
Bring your own models – import STL, OBJ, 3MF, STEP or SVG and build around it. An SVG comes in as a sketch body: an area, a stroke outside or inside its lines, a silhouette without its holes, or the drawing widened all round - together a cookie cutter from one file, or the layers of a multicolour logo. The Text shape has the same fill modes, and the shape library has a name tag: a text in coloured layers for a multicolour print, with an optional key ring hole and a rounded or chamfered edge on the letters, and an icon tag: an SVG icon in the same coloured layers, with a count and "as many as fit" to fill a plate. A coloured OBJ – from layerling, or from Tinkercad as a ZIP with its .mtl – or a coloured 3MF, slicer projects included, comes in as one body per colour, and a 3MF with several objects as one body per object.
Export what your slicer wants – STL, 3MF with names and colours, or OBJ with colours, for the selection or the whole scene (hidden parts stay out), plus STEP if the design should travel on into a full CAD program. PNG saves a clean picture of the view, at twice the resolution and with a transparent background if you like.
Drawing export – select a part, or clear the selection for the whole visible design, then choose Export → Drawing → PDF or SVG. Generates front, top and right-side views in first-angle layout on a bordered engineering sheet with zone numbers and a lower-right title block, with overall dimensions, hidden edges, and diameter/position tables for axis-aligned circular bores. Views are 1:1 in millimetres; the sheet uses the smallest fitting ISO landscape size (or a larger custom size). Print at 100% / actual size. Positions are measured from each view's lower-left overall corner. Hole tables use nominal mesh geometry and do not automatically dimension angled/non-circular holes, threads, depths or tolerances. The projection engine is adapted from Cadverix-3D's drawing work.
Update notice – on the published program an open page notices a new version by itself and offers to save and reload, listing what is new.
Projects as files – save a whole project, history, sketches and groups included, as a .lyl file and carry on elsewhere. In Chrome and Edge you choose the folder yourself and Ctrl+S saves into that same file again; other browsers download it. Older .skf files from earlier versions still open; saving then writes a .lyl beside them.
Bug report – one link in the footer saves a ZIP with the design as a .lyl and a text with the version, browser and last messages, ready to attach in the forum or on GitHub, which refuse a bare .lyl.
Designs you recognise – everything lives in your own browser, each design with a thumbnail.

Viewing

Perspective or straight-on – switch between the normal view and a flat, orthographic one with the cube button beside the zoom controls, or by pressing O. Your viewing direction and framing are kept.
Turn the view at the cube – dragging the view cube turns the view like the right mouse button, with one finger on a tablet; a click still jumps to that side, and a click on a corner or an edge looks from there. Keys 1–6 jump too, and Shift+1–6 also zoom to the selection.
Look from below – the eye over a grid in the camera bar hides the plate, so the underside of a design can be seen without it in the way.
Panels where you want them – the object list, the settings, the section view, the tape measure and the tool panels for edges, hollowing and patterns move by their title bar and open there again; a double-click docks them.
Right-click menu – a short right click on a body brings up the most used commands: duplicate, hole or solid, group, chamfer, fillet and hollow for one body, mirror and scale by percent, hide, lock, drop to the workplane, delete. Dragging with the right button still turns the view.
Section view – cut the view open along a plane across X, Y or Z to look at walls, cavities and parts that fit into each other, with a coarse and a fine slider. Only the view is cut: the design and every export stay whole. "Section as SVG" saves the cut itself at 1:1, for a laser or a template, and "Measure" reads wall thickness and gaps right on the cut, snapping square to the wall.
Workplane on any face – press W and click a face to build on it; a click near a corner puts it exactly on the corner, near an edge on the edge with the grid running along it, and on the empty plate where you click. An eye hides the plane for a clear view while it keeps applying. An AI can set it on a face too.
On a tablet – one finger works the design, exactly as the left mouse button does: tap to select, drag to move, drag on empty space for a selection box. Two fingers belong to the view: spread or pinch them to zoom, move them together to shift the workplane. Putting a second finger down takes back whatever the first one had started, so a pinch never nudges a part. Turning the view has no gesture of its own; the camera rail carries a switch for it, shown only on a touch screen, and while it is on, one finger orbits instead of selecting. Number fields hand you their whole value when you tap them, ready to be overwritten – a decimal keypad has no arrow keys to move the caret with. A finger reaches a little further to sketch points, lines, handles, measuring points and edges than a mouse does, but a stylus is the better tool on a tablet: finer, and it does not cover what you aim at.

Videos

Made by others, not by this project:

The PERFECT FREE CAD Program Between Tinkercad and Fusion 360! – Print N Repeat (English). A video about layerling as a free CAD program between Tinkercad and Fusion 360.
Meet Layerling Free Browser Based CAD that EXTENDS Tinkercad! – HL ModTech (English). A look at layerling by a Tinkercad user.
Layerling – Playlist – Making Layers (English). A series about layerling: an introduction for people coming from Tinkercad, and the sketch tools.
Tinkercad Too Basic? Fusion 360 Too Much? Meet Layerling for 3D Printing – 3D Jesus | 3D Printing & Design (English). A first-time test of layerling without any manual.

Getting Started

The shortest way is the hosted version. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for – open it and build:

https://layerling.com/

The rest of this section is about running your own copy: on your computer, or on a machine in the workshop that everyone opens in their browser. Wherever the app is served from, the designs never leave the browser they were made in, and exports download straight to the person's own computer.

Windows Quickstart

Never used a terminal before? On a Windows 11 (or current Windows 10) machine with nothing installed yet, open PowerShell (search for it in the Start menu, no administrator rights needed) and paste this one line:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/henmedia/layerling/main/scripts/windows-quickstart.ps1 | iex

It installs Git and Node.js if they are missing, downloads layerling into %USERPROFILE%\layerling, and opens it in your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3000/. Leave the PowerShell window open while you use layerling; Ctrl+C in that window stops it.

Run the very same line again whenever you want to update layerling – it notices the existing folder and pulls the latest version instead of downloading it a second time. The script itself lives at scripts/windows-quickstart.ps1, so you can read exactly what it does before running it, or download it and run it locally instead of piping it into PowerShell.

Opening It Again Later

The one-liner above also leaves a shortcut named “Start layerling” on your desktop. Double-click it whenever you want to open layerling again – no PowerShell, no re-installing, no re-downloading, just the server starting and your browser opening on its own. It also updates layerling first (when the folder has no changes of your own) and opens the browser only once the server is really ready. If layerling is already running, it starts no second server and does not update underneath the running one - it just opens the page. Wanted layerling somewhere else, say on another drive? Run the script with the folder you want:

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/henmedia/layerling/main/scripts/windows-quickstart.ps1))) -InstallPath "D:\3DPrinter\Layerling"

If your shortcut was made by an older version of the script, run the one-liner once more; it replaces the shortcut with the new one.

Prefer doing it by hand? Open PowerShell and run:

cd $env:USERPROFILE\layerling
npm run dev

then open http://127.0.0.1:3000/ yourself. Ctrl+C in that window stops it either way.

Docker

To run layerling on a computer, NAS (Synology, Unraid, etc.) or home server without installing Node.js, use the ready-made image henmedia/layerling on Docker Hub (also at ghcr.io/henmedia/layerling, the same image). Every release publishes it for amd64 and arm64 (Raspberry Pi, ARM NAS) under its version number and as latest. The app listens on port 3000.

The quickest way is a single command:

docker run -d --name layerling -p 3000:3000 --restart unless-stopped ghcr.io/henmedia/layerling:latest

On a NAS with a container manager (Synology Container Manager, Unraid, Portainer), search for henmedia/layerling in its registry (Docker Hub) or enter henmedia/layerling:latest, and map port 3000. To update, pull the image again and recreate the container (or let Watchtower do it).

The image tags are plain version numbers without a "v": ghcr.io/henmedia/layerling:1.42.0, while the GitHub release is called v1.42.0. A pull only fetches the new image; a container that already exists keeps running the old one until it is removed and created again:

docker pull ghcr.io/henmedia/layerling:latest
docker stop layerling
docker rm layerling
docker run -d --name layerling -p 3000:3000 --restart unless-stopped ghcr.io/henmedia/layerling:latest

docker inspect layerling | grep image.version shows which version the container really runs. If you mounted a folder for the server storage, add the same -v option again.

To build the image yourself instead, use the included Dockerfile and compose.yml:

Install Docker. On Windows or macOS, install and start Docker Desktop. On Linux or a NAS you need Docker with Compose (docker compose or the standalone docker-compose).
Get the files. Either download the repository as a ZIP (Code → Download ZIP) and extract it, or clone it:
```
git clone https://github.com/henmedia/layerling.git
cd layerling
```
Start it. In the project folder, open a terminal (e.g. PowerShell on Windows) and run:
```
docker compose -f docker/compose.yml up -d --build
```
With the older standalone binary, write docker-compose instead of docker compose. Docker builds the image and runs the container in the background (-d); the first build takes about 2–3 minutes. Without --build, the same command pulls the ready-made image instead.
Open it. On the same computer at http://localhost:3000/, from other devices on your network at http://<YOUR-SERVER-IP>:3000/.

Everyday commands:

Stop: docker compose -f docker/compose.yml down
Restart: docker compose -f docker/compose.yml up -d
Update (after pulling new code or extracting a new ZIP): docker compose -f docker/compose.yml up -d --build; with the ready-made image docker compose -f docker/compose.yml pull and then up -d

Installing as an app and offline use need https, and the static export. A browser installs an app and keeps it for offline use only on https:// or on localhost; on a plain http://192.168.x.x:3000 address it offers neither (layerling hides its install hint there). Even with https, the offline files (sw.js) are written only into the static export (see Static Hosting), not into this image, which runs the server version. For installing and offline use on a network, serve the static export over https; for an https address in front of the container, use a reverse proxy such as Caddy or nginx with a certificate (for example from mkcert).

The image runs next start in production mode, so the MCP bridge is off there unless you switch it on (see Letting an AI client reach a copy on a NAS or server). To offer a shared project folder, bind a writable directory and set LAYERLING_SHARED_PROJECTS_DIR in compose.yml to the path inside the container where it is mounted, for example ./shared-projects:/shared-projects with LAYERLING_SHARED_PROJECTS_DIR: "/shared-projects" (see Shared Designs on a Network). The container runs as the user with the number 999, so that user must be allowed to write to the folder: sudo chown 999:999 ./shared-projects, or add user: "1000:1000" to the service (your own user and group numbers, id -u and id -g show them) so that the container runs as you. Without it the folder shows up on the start page but nothing can be saved there. After changing it, run docker compose up -d: docker compose restart keeps the old setting. docker exec <container> printenv LAYERLING_SHARED_PROJECTS_DIR shows the one in use.

To choose the colour theme people get on their first visit, set LAYERLING_DEFAULT_THEME to system, light, dark or graphite (the same way, in compose.yml or in the environment of npm run start). Anyone who has opened layerling before keeps the theme their browser already has, and anyone can still change it with the theme switch. Without the setting the theme follows the system. A copy served as plain files has no server to read it, so it does not apply there.

With the shared folder on, LAYERLING_NEW_DESIGNS_ON_SERVER makes new designs start on the server: true is the start for people who have not chosen (they can untick New designs on the server on the start page), always holds for everyone and locks the tick. It is set the same way, and a copy served as plain files has no server to read it.

Static Hosting: Plain Files on a Web Server

Any web server can serve layerling as plain files; no Node.js runs on it. Build the files once on a computer that has Node.js (see What You Need):

npm install
npm run export

The finished site is in apps/web/.next-export/. Copy the contents of that folder (not the folder itself) into the web server's document root, so that index.html lies directly in it.

Four things to know:

layerling needs an address of its own. The files refer to each other with paths that start at the root (/_next/...), so layerling must be served at the root of an address, such as https://layerling.example.com/ or http://192.168.0.5:8080/. It does not work in a subfolder (https://example.com/layerling/) and cannot be opened from disk (file://). If you only see a block of plain text without any styling, the script and style files did not load: open the browser's developer tools (F12), look at the Network tab for red /_next/... entries and compare their address with where you put the files.
Folders that start with an underscore must be served. Some servers hide them (GitHub Pages does without a .nojekyll file, for example), and _next holds the whole program.
A quick test on your own computer: npx serve apps/web/.next-export and open the address it prints.
Installing as an app and offline use need https. The export holds the offline files (sw.js), but a browser uses them only on an https:// address or on localhost, not on a plain http:// address in your network.

Shared Designs on a Network

layerling itself is only files, so the shared folder needs something on the server that can write. There are two ways, and you need just one of them: Node or Docker (this section, with LAYERLING_SHARED_PROJECTS_DIR), or a plain web server with PHP (the store folder, further down). A web server that serves the files without either of them – npx serve, nginx or Apache without PHP – shows layerling fine, but has no server folder.

If you run layerling with npm run dev or npm run start on a machine other people open in their browser, it can offer a shared folder for .lyl designs. npm run start serves what npm run build made, so run that once first. Point LAYERLING_SHARED_PROJECTS_DIR at a directory the user who starts layerling may write to (a folder under /srv often belongs to root, make one of your own or change its owner) and start:

LAYERLING_SHARED_PROJECTS_DIR=/srv/layerling-projects npm run start

The start page then shows a folder named On the server beside your browser designs. Open it and you are in that folder: New design starts one right there, New folder makes a subfolder, and a trail under the heading says where you are. A .. tile leads back out, and Back to designs in this browser at the left of the buttons returns to the designs of this browser. Designs move by dragging them onto a folder, onto that tile or onto a step of the trail – or through Move to … in their menu. A design from your browser goes onto the server the same way: drag its card onto the server folder.

Two buttons on the start page save the trouble of moving designs one by one: Put all on the server moves every design of this browser into the server folder in one go, and the tick New designs on the server makes each new design start in the server folder, so it is saved there from the first change on. A design whose name is already taken on the server stays in the browser.

The search box at the top searches the whole server folder, not just the one you are standing in. Every hit says which folder holds it, and that folder is a button: one click and you are there, with the search cleared. Folders are found by name too. While you are searching, the server tile on the start page says how many matches are waiting over there.

Duplicate in a design's menu makes a copy of it. On the server the file itself is copied, next to the original and under a free name, picture and all – nothing is repacked, so the copy carries exactly the geometry of the original. In your browser the copy becomes a design of its own, with the same shapes, the same history and its own preview picture, and it belongs to nobody on the server.

A design that lives on the server saves itself back there, five seconds after the last change and when you leave the editor. Thumbnails land beside the files in .thumbnails. Designs that are only in your browser stay there, untouched.

Custom shapes saved to the server go into a folder named Custom shapes at the top of the store, one .lyl with its picture each. layerling creates it with the first such shape; it is an ordinary folder, so it shows on the start page and a shape in it opens and saves like any design. Neither the Node route nor store.php needs anything extra for it.

Opening a design from the server gives you a private local working copy. Saving back checks the revision on the server first; if someone else changed the file in the meantime, layerling refuses to overwrite it and asks you to reload or save under a different name. This is shared file storage, not simultaneous editing.

Without Node: the `store` Folder

An installation served as a static export – plain files on a web server – cannot write anything by itself. For that case store.php travels with the export. Create a folder named store next to index.html that the web server may write to, and layerling offers the same shared storage as above, folders and all. Without the folder the feature stays invisible, and the short guide in the editor explains how to switch it on. The web server needs PHP.

The folder has no login: whoever can reach the page can read, write and delete what is in it. On a home network or in a workshop that is the point; on a publicly reachable site, protect it or leave it out.

One thing to remember when deploying: if you mirror the export with an option that removes anything extra – rsync --delete, robocopy /MIR, WinSCP -delete – exclude store explicitly, or every update will wipe the projects.

Working on layerling

Take this path if you want to change the code.

What You Need

Node.js 20 or newer
npm, included with Node.js

Check your versions with node -v and npm -v. If those commands do not work, install Node.js from the official Node.js website and reopen your terminal.

Install and Run

git clone https://github.com/henmedia/layerling.git
cd layerling
npm install
npm run dev

No Git? Press the green Code button on the GitHub page, choose Download ZIP, extract it, open a terminal in the extracted folder and start with npm install.

Then open http://127.0.0.1:3000/. Leave the terminal open while you use the app; Ctrl+C stops the development server.

To open the development server from another computer by a name, such as http://myhost.local:3000/, list that name in the environment variable LAYERLING_ALLOWED_DEV_ORIGINS before you start (several names separated by commas, *.local for every name ending in .local). Without it, the development server answers only to localhost and 127.0.0.1. The static export and npm run start do not need it.

On Linux and macOS, scripts/start-layerling.sh does the daily start for you: it updates the checkout first (skipped if you changed files in it), starts the server, waits until it answers and then opens the browser. Run it from anywhere, for example ~/layerling/scripts/start-layerling.sh. It needs Git and Node.js, as above. If layerling already runs on that port, it only opens the browser instead of starting a second server. Port 3000 taken by something else? Start it with PORT=3100 scripts/start-layerling.sh. It has been tried on Debian Linux (without a desktop, so the browser step only prints the address) and in a Windows shell; macOS is untested – if it misbehaves on your system, please tell us in the discussions.

Developing in a Container

Prefer not to install Node.js? Develop in a container instead. You need a container engine with Compose – docker compose or podman compose (rootless Podman on SELinux works too; the :z flag in the compose file handles the file labels):

docker compose -f docker/compose.dev.yml up

Open http://127.0.0.1:3000/. The first start installs dependencies; later starts go straight to the dev server with hot reload. Stop it with Ctrl+C. If you update dependencies and something looks stale, delete node_modules/ in the project folder and start again.

Running the production container from docker/compose.yml at the same time? It uses port 3000 as well – change the host-side port on one of them (e.g. "3100:3000").

Useful Commands

Command	What it does
`npm run typecheck`	TypeScript checks
`npm run test`	Unit tests
`npm run test:e2e`	End-to-end tests
`npm run build`	Production build (`npm run start` serves it)
`npm run export`	Static export for plain web hosting
`npm run guide`	Build the user guide pages from `docs/guide` (the export and `npm run dev` do this too)
`npm run guide:images`	Retake the guide's pictures from the running program (needs `npm run dev -- -p 3010`; see `docs/guide/README.md`)
`npm run printers:update`	Refresh the printer presets from OrcaSlicer's profiles
`npm run mcp:layerling`	Start the MCP server for AI clients (see below)

layerling MCP Skill

layerling includes a local MCP server for AI clients that support MCP tools. It lets an agent inspect and control a live editor tab: list open editors, read the scene, create, update and select objects, group, cut and separate parts, list CAD edge ids, apply chamfer or fillet, hollow a body, inspect errors and capture viewport images.

It works against a local development server. In production builds and static hosting the MCP route is disabled, unless the server switches it on with an access token (see below); on layerling.com it is always off.

Start layerling from the project folder with npm run dev (see Install and Run).
Open an editor tab, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:3000/?editor=1 - or leave it out: when no editor is open, the first tool that needs one starts your browser with an editor (not for a copy on a NAS or server; LAYERLING_MCP_OPEN_EDITOR=0 switches it off).
Connect your AI client as described below. It starts the MCP server itself with node scripts/layerling-mcp-server.mjs.

The main tool names are layerling_list_editors, layerling_read_scene, layerling_list_objects, layerling_create_shape, layerling_update_object, layerling_list_edges, layerling_apply_edge_treatment, layerling_hollow_object, layerling_array_objects, layerling_set_section_view and layerling_capture_image.

Claude Code

Nothing to install: the repo already ships .mcp.json, which registers the MCP server for this project, and a copy of the skill at .claude/skills/layerling-mcp-skill, which is where Claude Code looks for one. Open the layerling folder in Claude Code and ask:

Use the layerling MCP tools to list my open layerling editors and inspect the current scene.

Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop does not read a project's .mcp.json or skill files, but it can use the same MCP server through its own config. Add the server there, using docs/mcp/claude-desktop-config.example.json as the template and replacing the script path with the absolute path on your machine. After restarting Claude Desktop, ask:

Use the layerling MCP tools to list open editors, inspect the scene, and modify the selected object.

Codex

Copy the skill from docs/skills/layerling-mcp-skill into your Codex skills folder.

Windows PowerShell:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\.codex\skills" | Out-Null
Copy-Item -Recurse -Force "docs\skills\layerling-mcp-skill" "$env:USERPROFILE\.codex\skills\layerling-mcp-skill"

macOS or Linux:

mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills
cp -R docs/skills/layerling-mcp-skill ~/.codex/skills/

Then add an MCP server entry to your Codex config, using docs/mcp/codex-config.example.toml as the template and replacing the script path with the absolute path on your machine. Restart Codex and ask:

Use $layerling-mcp-skill to list my open layerling editors and inspect the current scene.

Gemini & Antigravity

For Antigravity, the repo ships a copy of the skill at .agents/skills/layerling-mcp-skill, which Antigravity discovers automatically. For Gemini CLI, copy the skill from docs/skills/layerling-mcp-skill into your global skills folder.

Windows PowerShell:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\.gemini\skills" | Out-Null
Copy-Item -Recurse -Force "docs\skills\layerling-mcp-skill" "$env:USERPROFILE\.gemini\skills\layerling-mcp-skill"

macOS or Linux:

mkdir -p ~/.gemini/skills
cp -R docs/skills/layerling-mcp-skill ~/.gemini/skills/

Then add the server to your Gemini CLI settings.json or Antigravity mcp_config.json, using docs/mcp/gemini-config.example.json as the template and replacing the script path with the absolute path on your machine. Restart the client and ask:

Use the layerling MCP tools to list my open layerling editors and inspect the current scene.

Letting an AI client reach a copy on a NAS or server

A copy you host yourself (the Docker image on a NAS, a home server) can let an AI client drive its open editors over the network. It is off by default, because whoever can drive the bridge can read and change the open designs. Switch it on with two settings on the server, read when it starts - the ready-made image needs no rebuild:

environment:
  LAYERLING_MCP_REMOTE: "true"
  LAYERLING_MCP_TOKEN: "a-long-random-secret-of-at-least-16-characters"

Without a token of at least 16 characters the bridge stays closed. Then:

Open an editor tab of that copy in a browser, e.g. http://nas:3000/?editor=1, and keep it open.
Give the MCP client the address and the same token: set LAYERLING_URL=http://nas:3000 and LAYERLING_MCP_TOKEN=<the token> in its configuration (see the examples in docs/mcp).

The token protects the commands: only a client that sends it can list or drive the editors. The editor pages need none, but they only count when they are pages of that copy, opened by an address or a name that only someone in your own network can use (an IP address, a name without a dot, or one ending in .local or .lan). This keeps a web page on the internet from reaching your NAS through your browser. If you open the copy under a real domain, for example behind a reverse proxy, list it in LAYERLING_MCP_ALLOWED_HOSTS (comma-separated). Use this on a network you trust, and use HTTPS for anything beyond it: the token travels in a header.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and you do not have to be a 3D printing person to help – a clearer sentence in this README counts. Good places to start:

editor bug fixes
geometry and boolean test cases
import and export edge cases (STL, OBJ, 3MF, STEP, SVG)
UI polish
documentation screenshots and videos
accessibility and performance improvements

Read .github/CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request. What changed in each version is in the changelog.

Security

Please do not open public issues for security-sensitive reports. Read .github/SECURITY.md for the reporting process.

Where This Comes From

layerling is a fork of SketchForge-3D by Formsmith746 and the SketchForge contributors. The fork started on 16 September 2026 from SketchForge 1.0.9. SketchForge remains an excellent project and the reason this one exists.

Trademarks

Tinkercad is a trademark of Autodesk, Inc. layerling is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Autodesk.

License

layerling is a modified version of SketchForge-3D and is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 only (AGPL-3.0-only) – the same licence as the original. See LICENSE.

If you modify layerling and let people use the modified version over a network, section 13 of the licence requires you to offer them the corresponding source code. The dashboard carries a Source link for exactly that: set NEXT_PUBLIC_SOURCE_CODE_URL at build time to the public URL of the source your build came from.

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