Free CAD Software To Consider

Opinion by Ralph Grabowski

There is a remarkable renaissance of CAD and CAD-adjacent programs blooming on the Internet. Many are made possible by GitHub.

Here are just a few of many I’ve come across, some of which I did not try out. They’re free, and nearly all accept donations. Plus, I’ve interweaved the text with notable quotables.

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“The world is not a spreadsheet.”
- Tom Goodwin

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MonoSketch

Drawing rectangles, lines, and text with MonoSketch

MonoSketch says it makes diagrams in ASCII. From using it, however, it appears to me more that it works in a Visio-like fashion, but with just three entities: rectangles, lines, and text -- no ASCII. You can run it in a Web browser at monosketch.io.

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“Create value for others, and don’t worry about the returns.”
- George Hotz

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CAD Sketch for Blender

User interface of CAD Sketch running inside Blender

CAD Sketch adds 2D CAD-like design to the popular FOSS [free and open-source software] mesh modeler Blender. It works with constraints, tangents, dimensions, angles, and so on.

Download it from www.cadsketcher.com and then add it to Blender, which you find at www.blender.org. There’s extensive documentation at hlorus.github.io/CAD_Sketcher.

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“Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism.”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Million Dollar Deeds

Houses already imagined at Million Dollar Deeds

Okay, so this one is really far-adjacent to CAD. Million Dollar Deeds is the world’s first digital home registry. You pay $10, specify the kind of dream home you want, pick a spot on the 100,000-square grid, and a rendering is generated. Yours to keep — permanently! Complete with downloadable certificate.

Try it out — or not — at milliondollardeeds.com. The ‘million dollars’ refers to the amount the developer hopes to make: 100,000 lots x $10.

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“It would be impossible to have a moral society without influence from religion.”
- Jamie Wilde

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Adam

Adam reacting to a human-typed prompt

I don’t want to cover too many AI-related CAD programs, and trust me, there’s a metric tonne of ’em out there. Adam runs inside Onshape and powers the company’s own Cadam. You enter a prompt, which is a sentence describing the CAD part you want, and then it generates it. Parts can be edited with further prompts.

It is not unique in our field — I’ve mentioned Leo and Zoo before — and it is typical in that you need to first create an account at adam.new. The firm has $5.1 million in funding.

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“Two of the two richest guys in the world [Zuckerberg and Musk] tried to build AGI [human-like artificial general intelligence] with basically unlimited budgets, and failed.”
- Gary Marcus

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EZCAD3

And then there’s bare-bones CAD. EZCAD3 isn’t a CAD program, but a Python library, so I can’t show you a picture of it. You write a class-based program with Python (get that at www.python.org) in a text editor, and then EZCAD3 interprets the key words — such as part, angle, material — to generate the design and manufacturing files, including g-code. You get supply your own software for viewing the design.

As I said, bare bones. Source code and lots of example code available at https://github.com/waynegramlich/ezcad3.

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“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.”
- John Haldane

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OpenSCAD

Input scripts on the left, see the result on the right in OpenSCAD

Speaking of open-source CAD, the one that seems to me to be the most popular is OpenSCAD, because it actually makes its source code available. It’s a 3D CSG [constructive solid geometry] solid modeler. The user interface splits the screen in half, for entering commands in the form of scripts like cube(10); , and the graphical result displayed on the right. You edit a solid by editing the parameters enclosed in parentheses, such as cube([25,35,55]);.

Download it for Linux, MacOS, and Windows from openscad.org/downloads.html and learn to use it at openscad.org/documentation.html#tutorial.

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“Instead of creating intelligence, the AI industry created inflation.”
- Ralph Grabowski

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CadZinho

CadZinho showing a model in four viewports

For a self-described minimalist CAD program that’s also free, there is CadZinho, which reads/writes DXF files. It offers a scripting language, and can export to PDF, g-code, and HGPL.

Check it out through github.com/zecruel/CadZinho.

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"Someone called the Singularity 'the Rapture for atheists'.
That captures how these predictions function: They're not technical roadmaps; they're articles of faith designed to keep the money flowing, and to freeze people into feeling that resistance is futile."
- Hedgie

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AlphaCAD

The primary focus of AlphaCAD is dynamic panning — making it easier to see big drawings on small screens. To maximize the screen area, this program uses a hierarchical menu and keyboard shortcuts. Available in English, Polish, Ukrainian, and Spanish for Linux, Intel/ARM MacOS, and 32/64-bit Windows.

Free to download at alfacad.net, after you write the programmer for a password, because bots have been bombarding his site.

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“AI + Madness of Crowds = AGI Delusion”
- Pedro Domingos

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GNL

Enter parameters on the right, see the result on the left with GNL

We tend to be most familiar with CAD that designs widgets and broom closets, but there is a significant CAD presence in verticals like jewelry and garments. Here is GNL, short for ‘garment notation language’. Clothing design is parametric to account for one design being cut in many sizes, from XXS to M, to 4XL. The human body is the coordinate system, such as @should.L, and then the garment is composed from simpler elements to cover the frame and allow openings.

Like some of the other CAD programs mentioned here, you write the code in the left panel and see the result on the right. Try it out at github.com/khalildh/garment-notation?tab=readme-ov-file.

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“AI can be very useful. It can, for instance, help radiologists catch tumors they would otherwise miss.
But it’ll mostly be used to justify firing radiologists so hospitals can save money.
That will mean hospitals will earn more, but more people will die of cancer.”
- Matt Stoller

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Caad4Rhino

Toolbar for drawing and editing walls and opening with Caad4Rhino

Caad4Rhino adds architectural CAD tools to Rhino, such as for drawing walls, window openings, placing dimensions, and so on.

Learn how it works at github.com/caadxyz/caad4rhino.

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“We learn through friction and effort.”
- Andrew Orlowski

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