SolidCraft is open-source parametric 3D CAD in Rust: sketch, constrain, extrude, and change a parameter to watch the timeline rebuild. Documentation · try it in the browser · contributing · issues. AI agents can model with it over MCP: solidcraft-cli mcp (how).
Why 0.11: a minor release with new tools, big speed-ups and a new design file format (20). It includes everything in 0.10.1.
Faster
- Designs built by agents over MCP build about 15× faster. Every command used to transform and re-mesh the whole design; now only what changed is redone. A 1,280-body bicycle built command by command went from 241 s to 16 s (#1148, #1147).
- The viewport only re-uploads what changed. UI work per change on a 1,000-body design went from about 1.4 s to 18 ms (#1154).
- STEP assemblies mesh a repeated part once and place it for every instance: meshing went from 2.2 s to 0.14 s on a test assembly (#1152).
- Opening a design shows the model built so far while the rest loads (#1158).
- Open and Save run in the background, which also fixes crashes when resizing on macOS (#1127).
New
- Thin Extrude: walls of a set thickness along sketch curves (#991).
- Sheet metal perforation:
sheet.perforate, a field of holes that exports to the flat pattern (#1041); the flat-pattern DXF keeps ellipses, splines and text (#1096). - Updates in the app: SolidCraft tells you when a newer release is out (Preferences ▸ General ▸ Check now), and can download, verify against the release checksums and install it for AppImage, Windows and macOS. Package-manager installs (Flatpak, Snap, deb, rpm) show the command to run instead (#1100, #1118).
- Taper any profile, sketch text included (#1014); associative, editable sketch patterns (#1103); live tool previews (#1020).
- Kinematic loops: driven joints move four-bars and slider-cranks (#1141).
- Export a design's timeline as a replayable command script (#1045); STEP export writes extruded arcs, rounds and countersinks as native surfaces (#1139).
- Materials: local appearance and material libraries and validated engineering material data (#863, #998, #1019).
- Russian UI (#1043); Chinese and Japanese text picks fonts by UI language (#1070).
- Joints show in the viewport and can be hidden: an eye on each joint and on the Joints folder, Show/Hide (V) in the menu (#1168).
- Copy and Paste in the timeline's feature menu, macOS opens files double-clicked in Finder, title bar tab polish, and more.
Fixed
- Straight edges stay one edge after cuts. Cuts no longer chop the untouched edges of a face into many segments (#1101, #1049).
- Fillets and chamfers too large for their neighbours are refused with the largest size that fits, instead of building through other geometry (#1124); fillet and chamfer corner fixes (#854, #1066, #1067).
- Startup never stops at a bad settings file or a missing GPU. Unreadable settings are set aside, a software renderer is tried, and after two failed starts SolidCraft starts in safe mode (
--safe-mode) (#1138). - Pictures drawn without the GPU follow the window's theme (#1142); sheet-metal refold and convert fixes; paste, rename and sketch fixes.
Compatibility
Designs saved by 0.11.0 use file format 20 and don't open in 0.10.x or earlier. Older designs open and rebuild as before.
Thanks
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this release: @0xlillith, @CamWight, @del000, @erkexzcx, @gvocale, @HiroKenEz, @ingvarch, @javl, @jijinbei, @jonaswre, @jyviko, @Karl-VonRichter, @lasselian, @nekomario28, @Noly1990, @NOWN-DEV, @phanoob, @PhilippBischoff0, @SychPL, @tbreckle and @thodoristsagko.