ArtCraft released CADCraft, an open-source AutoCAD alternative in Rust

A free drafting app that reads and writes DWG files, keeps the exact command line engineers already type, and lets a coding agent produce a floor plan is now the alternative that drafters and engineers on an AutoCAD subscription did not have last month. CADCraft, the eleventh app from the ArtCraft open-source team, is a Rust drafting tool that the project pitches as a clean-room reimplementation of Autodesk AutoCAD. The GitHub repository is eleven days old and already carries 5,607 stars.

CADCraft runs on macOS as a universal binary, on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, and in the browser through WebAssembly. The source is on GitHub under MIT or Apache 2.0, and the ArtCraft organisation has 55,300 followers and 66 public repositories. The project marks itself as early development and links to a parity file that lists every known shortfall.

The AutoCAD workflow, kept command by command

The README says the command line, prompts with clickable keywords, autocomplete, object snaps, polar tracking, ortho, direct distance entry, window and crossing selection, grips and right-click to repeat all behave the way decades of drafting habit expect. Type L, click two points, type @5<45, press Enter, and a line goes where an AutoCAD user expects it. The command list that works today covers the draw and modify sets most drawings need: LINE, PLINE, CIRCLE, ARC, RECTANG, POLYGON, ELLIPSE, SPLINE, MTEXT, ERASE, MOVE, COPY, ROTATE, SCALE, MIRROR, STRETCH, OFFSET, TRIM, EXTEND, FILLET, CHAMFER, BREAK, JOIN, EXPLODE, rectangular and polar ARRAY.

File compatibility is the question most drafters ask first

CADCraft reads DXF from R12 through 2018 in both ASCII and binary, writes DXF R2000, and reads and writes DWG from R13 through 2018 through the open-source acadrust library. It plots to PDF and exports to SVG and PNG. The README is honest that any entity CADCraft does not yet model is dropped on save, and the project points at a file-format parity file that lists which entities those are. A drafter whose working set depends on an unsupported entity should wait; a team whose drawings are mostly lines, hatches, dimensions and blocks can test today.

The MCP server and the command line

CADCraft ships a cadcraft-cli tool that runs commands from the shell, converts drawings between formats, and starts an MCP server that gives a coding agent the same addressable interface. MCP tools include command_line, execute, inspect_drawing, query_entities and render, which returns a PNG of the drawing. Every menu item, tool and prompt in the app is a command, so the mouse, the command line, the control channel and an agent all drive the same code.

An engineering firm that pays for AutoCAD on every drafting workstation to update revision clouds, re-letter a schedule, or batch-plot a sheet set can wire cadcraft-cli or the MCP server into those routine jobs. A drafter who needs a specific lisp routine or an entity CADCraft does not model yet should wait until the parity file lists it as done.

Source

storytold/cadcraft on GitHub.