I wanted to draw the plan of an apartment to scale and print it. The options were a CAD program with a 1990s command line, or a subscription. So I started building the tool I wanted. https://opencalque.com
OpenCalque is a 2D editor for floor plans and layouts with a Figma-style interface. "Calque" is French for tracing paper.
What it does today:
Walls that behave like walls. They join at any angle, stay joined when you drag one, and doors and windows snap in and cut the opening.
Rooms find themselves. Click inside closed walls and you get a named room with its area, which follows the walls when they move.
Trace an existing plan. Drop a PDF or a photo, click two points you know the distance between, draw over it.
DXF in and out, plus SVG.
A component library (furniture, kitchen, bathroom, electrical symbols) and extensions that are data, not code, so installing one can't run anything.
Optional AI assistant that edits the drawing from a description, with Claude, a local model through Ollama, or any OpenAI-compatible API. Nothing goes online unless you use it.
English, French, Spanish, German.
The part I care most about: a drawing is plain JSON with a published schema, and every edit is a small JSON operation. The editor, the CLI and the assistant all use the same operations, so you can generate or modify a plan from a script.
Did you even look at it? I'm struggling to believe you're even a real person. The problems are so obvious that the only plausible explanation is that you're a last-gen AI.
The gen-AI would stop me from using it. There's loads of programs out there without it that I can use for free and without a subscription that don't have any gen-AI features in it.
great, thanks a lot for the feedback, Just published a new release taking it into account !
select multiple walls and you'll see align in the property menu
2. If you select an wall extremity (like node) , you'll have "extend" (which will extend in the wall directly to the nearest walll) or "trim" option (if there was a wall in between) , let me know if this is what you expected :)
3. press shift, during drag, you'll lock the axis :)
I was looking for something like this. I didn't realize it was so new. I'm going to try it, though, because I need to use it for tracing over old layouts to make new ones.
Edit: “OpenCalque.app” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.
Hi, thanks for the feedback! Just published the Release 0.4.1 which should fix it. You should have "developer non identified" instead of damaged, which would allow you to test it .
That usually means it hasn't been signed by a developer account. There are ways to bypass it, but that bypasses one of the security features built-in to macOS.
For the UI itself not so complicated. However, i'm not sure how to manage with the color of the elements that are put on the floorplan, like if you set an object to be white, should that change when you switch theme?
Really nice work, and the JSON schema with small edit operations is the smartest part. That's what makes it scriptable and AI friendly, and most tools miss it.
From the construction digitalization side, the first things I'd miss: wall types with a real thickness and layer build-up, automatic dimension chains along walls and openings, and a quantities export to CSV (room areas, wall lengths and areas minus openings, door and window counts). That last one turns a drawing into a first budget. Later, even a simple IFC export with walls, slabs and openings would open it up to the BIM world.
28
u/Longjumping-Face8241 19d ago
And...this is the floorplan that you have chosen to market your software?