SolidCraft
An open-source parametric 3D CAD application built in pure Rust.
Sketch, constrain, and build solids with a parametric feature timeline. Change a dimension
and watch your model rebuild. Run it on your desktop, in your browser, or let AI agents
model through the built-in MCP server.
A Raspberry Pi 4 case from an empty design: a sketch dimensioned with the board's parameters, extrude, fillet, shell, the rim rounded in one pick, an M2.5 standoff patterned on the 58 × 49 mm hole rectangle, port cut-outs, vent slots, "Pi 4" engraved in DejaVu Sans Bold and a PETG material defined in the design, with its mass in Properties, then height 24 → 32 mm in Parameters and it all rebuilds. 9× playback. Full video, recorded with the demo script.
Download
- Windows: download and run the installer.
Also for ARM64 and 32-bit PCs, or as a
portable zip that runs without installing.
- macOS: open the disk image and drag SolidCraft into Applications
(Apple silicon and Intel).
- Linux: download the AppImage, allow it to run as a program and open it.
Or install the .deb (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint) or .rpm (Fedora,
openSUSE), or use Flatpak.
With Snap:
sudo snap install solidcraft (Snap Store, or the .snap file).
For ARM64: AppImage, .deb, .rpm.
- Web: try it in your browser, no install.
The downloads aren't signed yet. On Windows, if SmartScreen warns you, choose More info, then
Run anyway. On macOS, the first time, right-click SolidCraft in Applications and choose Open.
Older versions, checksums and other formats are on the releases page.
Install details, upgrading from earlier builds and building from source are in
Getting started.
Documentation: the SolidCraft book (user guide,
developer guide and command reference; sources in docs/book).
Status: early but usable for simple parts. 75 of 76 public reference parts
match their analytic or FreeCAD-computed volume, area, centre of mass and bounding box
(docs/oracle.md); the other is a tracked bug.
These checks do not establish complete geometric or workflow equivalence. The commands SolidCraft has
are listed by area in docs/features.md; status and plans are in ROADMAP.md.
Open work and known bugs are in GitHub issues,
and help is welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Built with SolidCraft
SELENE, a scientific rover built entirely through SolidCraft's MCP server by
@0xlillith: 3,323 editable timeline steps that
rebuild with no errors, replayed here at 2× speed.
Full video
· download the editable model.
What works
- Sketches on origin planes, offset planes or planar faces: lines, rectangles, circles,
arcs, polygons, slots, ellipses, fit/control splines, conics and text; construction geometry,
projection, trimming, fillets and chamfers, including corners at the origin.
New face attachments retain supported construction identities and chosen occurrences;
missing sources expose an explicit plane repair workflow. See face attachments.
Explicitly closed fit splines and closed associative offsets use periodic C2 interpolation.
Supported convex line-and-arc offsets retain their identity when an inset consumes corner
arcs, and linked extrusions follow the current boundary. Breaking the association freezes
the boundary and keeps existing extrusions usable.
Curve drawing and picking adapt together to zoom and display scale, including small circles
at Fit and sketches in placed components.
- Constraints and dimensions solved by our own solver. Points the constraints fix relative
to known geometry are placed exactly by construction (loci intersections and rigid-cluster
decomposition, after Owen 1991 and Fudos–Hoffmann 1997); Levenberg–Marquardt solves the rest,
and the rank of its Jacobian gives the remaining degrees of freedom. Constraints: coincident,
point on curve, horizontal/vertical, parallel, perpendicular, tangent, curvature (G2), equal,
concentric, collinear, midpoint, symmetry, fix; linear, aligned, horizontal, vertical,
point-to-line, radius, diameter, angle, arc sweep, arc length and slot length dimensions driven
by parameters. Over-constraining edits are rejected; fully constrained geometry turns black.
Dragging solves the sketch every frame and rebuilds the model once, when the drag ends.
Select a line or its two endpoints, type its dimension and press Enter to commit one undo
step; with Sketch Dimension it's D, click, type, Enter. Fit keeps sketch geometry clear of the palette and navigation controls.
- Profiles found automatically, including regions split by lines and holes inside outlines.
Newly captured complete adaptive boundaries retain their outer and hole source identities
when spline span counts change. Partial or ambiguous boundaries do not qualify.
- Features on a parametric timeline: extrude, revolve, sweep, loft, fillet/chamfer,
shell, draft, holes, threads, patterns, mirror, split, combine, move and construction geometry.
The timeline rebuilds incrementally; features can be edited, suppressed, renamed, reordered
and deleted. Supported geometry and current limitations are described in ROADMAP.md.
New revolves preserve symmetric and two-sided angular placement across reversed axes;
older designs retain their saved convention when reopened or edited.
- Parameters and configurations with unit-aware expressions (
2 * width + 5 mm,
angle / 2), ordered rules, feature suppression and per-row body materials/appearances.
- Assemblies with nested components and occurrences, joints, motion studies, contact sets,
interference and material-aware mass properties. Recorded body transfers preserve modelling
history and world placement; 3D sketch wires retain their coordinate frames through edits.
- Sheet metal with flanges, hems, fold/unfold/refold, material cutouts, flat patterns,
retained shallow prismatic pockets, exact line/arc/circle DXF outlines and bend tables;
plastic enclosure features and rules. Pocket depth and side survive unfold/refold and appear
separately from through-hole outlines in the flat preview and DXF.
- Files: design containers (
.solidcraft) with lossless binary mesh payloads;
plain JSON remains supported for opening, Save As and export. Desktop Open can show a saved
provisional picture from warm geometry caches while rebuilding before editing; caches never
replace the parametric design. Export to STEP (AP242 with body names, colours and
components as assemblies; revolved faces as native planes, cylinders, cones, spheres and tori),
IGES 5.3 (manifold solid B-reps with names and colours), 3MF, STL (binary/ASCII) and OBJ;
3MF, STL and OBJ import as mesh bodies (they render, measure, move and export; solid features
need B-rep bodies). Convert Mesh reconstructs supported closed constant-section parts
as parametric solids with planar and circular cylindrical faces;
STEP import (AP203/AP214/AP242 solids, assemblies, units, names, colours) and IGES import
(manifold solid B-reps, or trimmed and bounded surfaces sewn into solids) as a base feature
that later features build on — open a .step/.stp/.igs/.iges file, insert one into a
design, or drop it on the window (docs/step-import.md).
- Desktop app (egui + wgpu): toolbar with workspace tabs, browser, timeline, 3D viewport with
axis view and navigation bar, sketch tools, feature dialogs, command palette, and a JSON-lines
control channel so agents and tests can drive it.
Feature errors and Help can open an editable Create Issue draft with relevant context
and an optional reviewed screenshot; opening GitHub does not submit the report.
- Headless CLI
solidcraft-cli: run command scripts, measure (volume, area, centre of mass,
face/edge/vertex counts), export, render PNG snapshots and replay reference recipes.
- MCP server
solidcraft-cli mcp: AI agents model, measure and look at parts headless or
in the running app (see below).
Build and run
cargo run --release -p solidcraft -- --sample # desktop app with a sample part
cargo run --release -p solidcraft-cli -- commands # the command registry
cargo run --release -p solidcraft-cli -- run examples/bracket.json --out bracket.step
cargo run --release -p solidcraft-cli -- snapshot examples/bracket.json --out bracket.png
cargo run --release -p solidcraft -- part.step # open a STEP file as a new design
cargo run --release -p solidcraft-cli -- eval part.step # measure an imported STEP file
cargo xtask ci # fmt, clippy, tests, assets, layers, wasm
Windows builds: cargo xwin build --release --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc -p solidcraft.
On Windows and Linux, SolidCraft detects a connected 3Dconnexion SpaceNavigator or SpaceMouse through its
multi-axis HID interface. Move the cap to pan and zoom, and tilt or twist it to rotate the 3D view.
While editing a sketch, the cap pans and zooms without changing the sketch view. The Navigation
page in Preferences has an on/off switch and a speed control for the 3D mouse.
On Linux SolidCraft reads /dev/hidrawN directly, so the logged-in user needs access to the
device. A udev rule that adds the uaccess tag does that, for example
/etc/udev/rules.d/70-3d-mouse.rules for devices with 3Dconnexion's vendor id:
SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="256f", TAG+="uaccess"
Older SpaceNavigators use Logitech's vendor id 046d; add a rule with their product id (see lsusb)
instead of matching every Logitech device. Reload with sudo udevadm control --reload && sudo udevadm trigger, then replug the device. The Flatpak
sandbox does not expose hidraw devices, so the 3D mouse only works with native builds there for now.
Devices that send all six axes in HID report 1 (some homemade ones do) are recognised from their
report descriptor, so they work as well.
In the browser: cd apps/solidcraft-web && trunk build --release --public-url ./ (WebGPU, or
WebGL2 with ?webgl; ?sample opens the sample part).
Scripts
A script is a JSON list of commands, the same ones the UI runs:
{"commands": [
{"command": "sketch.create", "params": {"plane": "XY"}},
{"command": "sketch.rectangle.two_point", "params": {"p0": [0, 0], "p1": [40, 30]}},
{"command": "solid.extrude", "params": {"distance": 20}},
{"command": "solid.fillet", "params": {"edges": [[0, 0, 10]], "radius": 3}}
]}
AI agents (MCP)
solidcraft-cli mcp is a Model Context Protocol server on
stdio. Headless it runs its own design session; with --connect 127.0.0.1:PORT it drives the app
started with solidcraft --control PORT, so you can watch the agent model. Tools:
list_commands, execute, batch, inspect_design, measure, body_topology,
set_parameter, screenshot (returns the image), export, undo, redo, new_design, open,
save. Tool calls reach files only in the open design's folder (when it lies inside your home
folder, never home itself or a hidden folder), SolidCraft's recovery folder and folders given with
--allow-path DIR. Claude Code: claude mcp add solidcraft -- solidcraft-cli mcp. Details, client
configuration and an example session: docs/mcp.md.
Architecture
| Layer |
Crates |
Role |
| L0 |
geom |
vectors, planes, profiles, meshes and their measures |
| L1 |
sketch, kernel, render |
constraint solver and profiles; the B-rep kernel boundary (truck); view math and CPU rasterizer |
| L2 |
doc |
parameters, expressions, the feature timeline and its incremental evaluation |
| L3 |
io |
design files, STL/OBJ/STEP/3MF export, STEP and 3MF/STL import features |
| L4 |
engine |
the session and the command registry (everything is a command) |
| L5 |
ui-egui, mcp |
the swappable desktop front end; the MCP server (headless or bridged to the app) |
| apps |
solidcraft, solidcraft-cli |
desktop app, headless CLI |
Contributing
Coming from Autodesk Fusion? SolidCraft uses familiar parametric CAD workflows: constrained
sketches, solid features, an editable timeline, parameters and assemblies. See the
roadmap for supported operations and current limitations.
See CONTRIBUTING.md: how to build and test, the code map, the clean-room
and licence rules, and where help is wanted most.
Licence
MIT OR Apache-2.0, at your option. Developed under the
clean-room contribution rules; third-party code and assets retain their
documented licences and attribution.
SolidCraft is independent. Behaviour is designed from public documentation, general CAD
conventions and user feedback. Reference tests use analytic values and open-source tools.
SolidCraft is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Autodesk. Autodesk and
Fusion are trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.
SolidCraft 是一个用纯 Rust 编写的开源参数化 3D CAD 应用:你可以绘制草图、添加约束,然后在特征时间线上构建实体。它可以在桌面或浏览器中运行,也可以通过内置的 MCP 服务器以无界面模式由 AI 智能体来驱动。