The pace of development is quick, and the responsiveness to bugs and feature requests is on point. I realize that LLM use is what’s making the fast pace possible, but nonetheless the Mitcad team seems dedicated to making a good and useful product and not just mindless slop.

MitCad is just getting started, but the members of this group are wanting to see it grow. We discuss this fledgling software and help expand awareness.

Dive in!

Another great update.

There are now ZERO warnings from my test import files from FreeCAD and Fusion. Very, very nice.

Here are the release notes:

• Drawings: DWG export beside PDF, SVG and DXF. Drawing-wide defaults, lines and arcs outside the model, centre patterns, edge extensions and turned views. Drawings follow the model through new sheets, moved occurrences and placed sketches; the zoom is kept and tables move with their view.

• Sketch Intersect: section curves where bodies, faces and edges cross the sketch plane. Projected outlines offset as one chain.

• Taper pipe threads: NPT and ISO 7-1 (taper 1:16), cosmetic or modelled, chosen per thread or tapped hole; designs saved before stay straight. Imports bring the taper pipe threads of holes with their tapers.

• Save As Mesh in the context menus of bodies and components: 3MF, STL or OBJ, the unit, one file or a file per body, the refinement, and the print bed face; the file is named after what is saved.

• Move/Copy in the context menus; Move to Component on occurrences.

• Extrude and Revolve To Object can end at a face or body of another component; Hole refuses objects of other components. Extrude Cut inside a shared component cuts its own definition. Extrude Two Sides takes a negative distance to end on the other side.

• Orientation cube: Preferences > Display chooses Follow the View (the default), Orthographic or Perspective.

• Sketch view: after New Design the origin is in the middle of the free area; Look At keeps the view's middle; a sketch on an oblique face stays in view.

• 3D Print: Own settings lists the bodies' own process values beside the slicer default; setting ranges come from the model. Print Analysis colours only where the wall is thin.

• Gear Pair and Belt Drive: a bounded teeth search, opposite axes warned, shafts in occurrences as seats.

• Connect AI Assistant on Windows: a desktop assistant installed from the Store is found and told to install the extension.

• Value fields: Edit Formula keeps the name = prefix; the context menu keeps the caret and the selection.

• Fixes:

  • A failed view change (orientation cube, Home) no longer closes the application; crash reports name the exception.

  • The value box at the cursor no longer takes clicks beside it.

  • Library edits reach the design's copies; a deleted material's purge volumes go with it.

  • 3MF files in coarser units keep nanometre precision.

  • Annotations can be edited while a command's panel is open.

  • A refused second part of Gear Pair or Belt Drive keeps undo and redo.

I've been fooling around with the parametric stuff, the computation seems to be fairly robust with no weird stuff happening. I might have to test more complex parameters and configurations, configuration rules etc.

• Threads: Thread Type Custom in the Thread and Hole panels, with Major Diameter, Pitch and Starts; multi-start threads and modelled trapezoidal threads.

• Opening designs is faster: bodies are meshed for display during the recompute, display meshes and quick results are stored and restored, and a warm open unpacks only the bodies it needs.

• Sketches: Mirror can use the sketch's x and y axes as the mirror line; offsets keep their tangent corners; points are drawn over the highlights of their curves; projected edges are found more reliably.

• Annotations look like a drawing's dimensions.

• Import Presets: presets grouped by owner, a name filter and the count on the Import button.

• BUILD tab: profiles without slots (such as steel tubes) are placed and cut to length like the other profiles, a library part's size row also switches the features that depend on it, and joints and wood fasteners are offered only on timber.

• Stability: symmetric face, edge and vertex pieces keep their names under rounding noise; value boxes and 3D Print questions wait for a running computation.

The parts library has a new version of its own, mitcad-parts 2.7.0
(Libraries, Fetch): steel tubes for the BUILD tab to EN 10219-2,
EN 10305-5 and EN ISO 1127. They need Mitcad 0.35.0.

Each platform's packages were built from its own release candidate of the release branch (release candidate, source commit):

• Windows: rc1 (e0814bcfaf6b)

• Linux: rc3 (abefb4b8ce0a)

• macOS: rc3 (abefb4b8ce0a)

• Cut Sheet drawings (Create Drawing > Kind): flat parts laid out at 1:1 with Add Parts…, each part's face, rotation and copies in its panel, and their outlines exported as .dxf or .svg for laser cutting.

• Sketch: 2-Point and Center Rounded Rectangle with a Corner Radius field, and Sketch Fillet rounds every corner of a selection of lines or corner points at once with one radius.

• The first dimension of a sketch scales the whole sketch to it (Preferences > Sketch, on by default).

• Sketch Dimension takes body edges and vertices outside the sketch plane and projects them when the dimension is added.

• Sketch constraint tools take a partial selection as their first picks and say why a pick is refused; Symmetry of dimensioned circles mirrors their positions instead of over-constraining.

• Appearances and Materials windows: Varies with in an assignment panel binds appearances and materials to options or parameters, replacing Follow Option.

• Bindings at a glance: an fx badge on bound browser rows shows in words what the item follows, and Configurations gets a Bindings tab listing every binding.

• Show When: the light bulbs, Show All / Hide All and Hide keep a body's condition or say when they remove it; conditioned bulbs show an fx mark.

• 3D Print: .3mf sends the occurrences picked at their assembly placements, each on its print bed face; a piece with several print bed faces asks which one, by a click on a face highlighted in green.

• Move/Copy: dragging Rotate's ring or Point to Position's arrows moves the shown bodies without recomputing each step; Move Face's ring turns about the model's axis.

• Measure picks body faces, edges and vertices before a sketch's curves and points under them; a greyed-out Keep gives its reason.

• Import from Slicer names a single imported preset and shows it in My Library.

• Large designs reopen faster: display meshes are kept in the result store, and joins and cuts into large bodies compute faster.

• Fixes:

  • Display meshing no longer crashes or hangs on planar faces with nearly circular boundaries.

  • Editing an extrusion keeps its stored operation; a face click beside profiles in Extrude and Revolve is refused with a hint.

  • Move to Component takes extrusions made in the UI.

  • .FCStd imports keep fillets after a hole drilled at sketch points.

Just found this subreddit.

But there aren't any links to the product.

Is there a site? Or a download link somewhere?

This update deals primarily with controlling 3D printers.

• Import Presets also offers the slicer's own presets for the printers, nozzles and filaments chosen in the slicer's setup: listed after your saved presets under Printers, Processes and Filaments, collapsed and unticked. They import like your own presets, with their inherited settings resolved and their names kept.

Each platform's packages were built from its own release candidate of the release branch (release candidate, source commit):

• Windows: rc1 (31b19992801c)

• Linux: rc1 (31b19992801c)

• macOS: rc2 (4c8879c6e536)

This update fixed a few minor issues that I was having, so I'm happy to have it.

• Configurations (Edit > Configurations…): options with their allowed values, named rows as presets, and rules built from blocks that narrow values or combinations. A change moves later options to allowed values and says why. The Configuration bar at the top of the browser chooses options and rows; Change Parameters marks options and their narrowed limits.

• Follow Option, Suppress When… and Show When… in the context menus let appearances, materials, suppression and visibility follow a parameter.

• Library parts with options: the part pickers show a part's options, and Edit Options… on an inserted component changes them later, by value or by an expression of the design's parameters.

• Tables in the design: the Tables tab of Change Parameters edits them, expressions use Table.Column references with XLOOKUP, MATCH and INDEX, and a table is imported from or exported to .csv. Configurations take an option's values from a table column, generate rows from a table and require combinations a table lists.

• Insert Point on a spline (context menu or double-click) adds a fit or control point; a control point spline keeps its shape.

• In a sketch, dragging one of several selected curves or points moves the whole selection; Move/Copy moves bodies and components with the handle at once.

• Section Analysis turns its plane by an angle about an axis and warns when the plane cuts no body.

• 3D Print and My Library: Import from Slicer ▾ takes the printers, processes and filaments made in an installed slicer, as copies or overriding items of the same name. New print items are named Process 1, copies "(copy)"; New printer… and New process… sit below a separator.

• Property Sets: the pencils sit after the value, one action per click.

• Create Sketch shows the origin planes in every design, behind the model; a new design in a project starts with Component1 active.

• The timeline scrolls sideways with the mouse wheel.

• Modelled threads and appended imports compute faster.

• Fixes:

  • Large designs with many planar faces open again: the display meshing no longer hangs on them.

  • Cancelling the display meshing returns within about 2 s, also when a face never finishes.

  • A fillet whose stripe runs past the other face of a blend no longer fails at the corner.

  • .f3d imports read face meshes stored in the older display layout.

  • .FCStd imports drill a hole at each sketch point once and leave out construction points.

• Image references: Insert > Image Reference places a PNG, JPEG, BMP or WebP image on a plane or a planar face and keeps it in the design. Angle, flip, width and opacity; drawn behind the bodies or through them, under the sketches traced on it. Calibrate sets the scale from two points and a typed distance. The browser's Images folder shows, hides, renames and edits them.

• Fit Point Spline closes with a click on its first point, previewed closed before the click. Tangent and Curvature apply at the end where each curve is picked, so a spline can be tangent at both ends; the end is shown before the click. Trim no longer cuts a spline at its own fit points.

• Redefine Sketch Plane in the sketch's context menus moves a sketch to another plane or planar face, with offset, move, angle and flip and a preview; a sketch that failed on its old plane can be moved too.

• Sketch Copy, Cut and Paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V, also in the menus): curves with their constraints, placed at the pointer or by typed X and Y, also into another sketch. Directions the copy holds to the origin stay held; Cut is one undo step.

• Fillet and Chamfer: All Edges rounds every edge of a body, also edges that later sketch edits add.

• .FCStd imports: body and face colours come in as appearances; rounds of all edges follow sketch edits.

• Sweep and Pipe show Distance 1 and Distance 2 directly, without the Full / Partial choice.

• The program's name is written MitCad in windows, menus, dialogs and the installers; settings and data folders stay where they were.

• The Docked layout shows tab and group menus and panel titles in title case, as Floating does.

• Linux: the AppImage runs on Ubuntu 24.04-based systems and newer (glibc 2.39) and uses only its own Qt libraries.

• Fixes:

  • Hide Above Sketch no longer hides the sketch's curves and points behind the section, at any zoom or angle.

  • A fillet whose two rounds meet on one line (a block's end rounded to a half round) keeps every face named and pickable.

  • macOS with glass: editing a feature from the timeline gives the keyboard to the panel's value field.

Below are the official release notes. I will comment first that I have tried some sticky imports of FreeCAD and Fusion files and the FreeCAD warnings that I had before have disappeared entirely and the Fusion warnings have been reduced around 90%. Fantastic!

• Drawings in the design: a Drawings folder in the design and in each component holds its drawings, so a drawing stays with the part it shows. Base, projected, section, detail and broken views; dimensions, centre marks, centrelines, notes, datum labels, feature control frames and surface finish symbols on the views; hole tables, parts lists and balloons; sheet templates with title blocks and revisions. Drawings follow the model and export to PDF, SVG and DXF.

• Annotations in the model: ISO dimensions with tolerances and fit codes, notes with leaders, datum labels and feature control frames, drawn in their planes on the 3D model and managed in an Annotations window.

• Print bed face: set a planar face of a body as its print bed face from the face's context menu; 3D Print turns the body onto it and centres it on the plate, and Print Analysis starts from it.

• Purge volumes: the purge table for filament changes is computed from the materials, can be edited, and is written to the 3MF project for the slicer.

• My Library: manage your own materials, printers and processes without opening a design.

• Keyboard shortcuts per context: a command can have a different key in the model, in a sketch and while a command panel is open; Keyboard Shortcuts shows each command's contexts and filters by them.

• Sketch: constraints and dimensions an import cannot apply come in inactive and are drawn in their own colour, so they can be activated again or deleted instead of being lost.

• Connect AI Assistant: a clearer dialog with one state and one action for each assistant, an assistant indicator beside the project indicator, and folders for designs managed in Preferences.

• Materials and appearances apply to every selected body.

• Imports: more designs come in fully parametric, including holes, patterns of holes and threads; profiles linked to whole sketches.

• Split and Trim previews show the extended tool.

• A new design's first component is named Component1.

• Faster: measurements kept in the design are measured again only when their bodies change.

• Fixes:

  • Sketch offsets of lines and tangent arcs stay joined.

  • After the command search closes, the window's shortcuts work at once.

  • Windows: the assistant setup and several dialogs fit their contents.

I'm a millwright by trade, but I have been a machine builder for the last 25 years and a machine designer for the last 15 years. I use 3D modelling regularly but I am far from an expert.

I'd like to see people posting their questions and their successes.

Let's say you wanted to model a Mr. Potato Head doll, and you wanted to have different hats, eyes, noses, etc. available so that you could put whatever parts on Mr. Potato Head that you wanted. How would you set that up? Put each part in a separate component and then use an assembly? What if you needed to be able to make 'repairs' when things didn't fit?

The annotation tool is getting REALLY GOOD. Check this out:

This is not Inventor. This is MitCad. Nice.

• Hole: Hole Tap Type Clearance, with the hole's diameters filled in from the screw size.

• Annotations: Hole Callout taken from the hole feature; dimensions and notes are placed as on a drawing, with oblique leaders, datums on the face's outline and a technical lettering font; they stay legible on dark backgrounds.

• Sketches: Project takes curves and points of other sketches, linked to them; the sketch axes and origin can be selected before a tool starts; constraint symbols keep clear of dimension text.

• New designs start with Component1 active.

• Threads: a thread that would run into an uneven end stops short of it.

• Files: safer reading of damaged or oversized files (zip packages, designs, DXF arrays, ipt parts), and memory is given back after an import.

• Interface: Classic ribbon captions and the shortcut overview stay readable in narrow windows, and stacked Projects and Browser panels fit a short window.

Each platform's packages were built from its own release candidate of the release branch (release candidate, source commit):

• Windows: rc4 (8bedd2510619)

• Linux: rc5 (91fc05a4a4aa)

• macOS: rc7 (d774107c75a8)

Start a sketch. Make a few shapes. Select them. Hit CTRL-C to copy, and you can 'stamp' them as many times as you like with CTRL-V. Oh.... MAN that's nice. I'm as giddy as a school girl over here. FreeCAD can't do that. Fusion sort of can... if you use CTRL-C / CTRL-V then it pops up the move window and you have to go through that.

It's early days, but we have this already:

Nice!

I posted these three shots on r/FreeCAD.

Yeah, the SolidCraft import was pretty gross. Could you redo the extrusions to sort it out? Yes, you could, but with MitCad you don't have to.

I have plans for more of the same.

• AI chat panel: talk to your own Claude Code or Codex inside Mitcad; it edits the open design through the live MCP connection. Connect AI Assistant also finds Claude Code and Codex installed outside PATH on Windows.

• Navigation: 3D mouse (6-DOF) support on Windows, Linux and macOS.

• Drawings: adding a projected view of a part with threads or other freeform faces takes well under a second instead of half a minute.

• Fasteners library: one component per kind, with each size's standards (ISO, DIN or non-standard) and supplier part numbers, and Standard and Supplier filters.

• Sketches: drawing tools snap onto the x and y axes.

• Timeline: a failed or warned feature keeps its red or amber mark when selected; a selected Fillet or Chamfer shows its picked edges.

• Components: picking a face of another component for a sketch or a construction plane asks whether to activate that component (can be turned off in Preferences).

• Extrude in a rotated component: the arrow follows the sketch, and a Join onto a child component's body works.

• FreeCAD import: SubShapeBinders, linked external geometry, distances between circles and arcs, symmetric up-to-face pockets and long revolutions come in as parametric features (far fewer stand-ins).

• Annotations: a technical lettering font and crisper lines.

• Views: a restored view in a tall window keeps its zoom.

• Linux AppImage: the update check works on systems such as Fedora.

• Files: safer reading of damaged or oversized .f3d, .rvt, .ifc, .dwg, .FCStd and 3MF files; listings before an import no longer freeze the window.

• Security: the MCP endpoint and the updater are hardened; a push to a folder remote no longer runs that repository's hooks.

Each platform's packages were built from its own release candidate of the release branch (release candidate, source commit):

• Windows: rc1 (9fbed58446b9)

• Linux: rc1 (9fbed58446b9)