SketchFlow

A vector sketch board for fast idea capture. You draw with a mouse, stylus or finger, and an AI connected over MCP can see your board and draw on it too.

Everything you draw stays editable: lines, shapes and text are vectors. Endpoints and corners snap together and join, and joined points move together when you drag them. On top of that you get drawing spaces (isometric, 1/2/3-point perspective, 3-view and 4-view), parametric dimensions, layers, collage and tracing, background cut-out, and a first linkage/motion simulator.

v2 adds a parametric 3D model workspace at /3d/. You build solids from primitives, sketch-and-extrude, loft, revolve and sweep, then combine them with mates and booleans. Fillets and chamfers decide for themselves whether to add or remove material. The model is shown in four linked views (TOP · 3D · FRONT · RIGHT) that carry each object's dimensions, and you can edit those dimensions in place. The AI builds with the same operations through six model_* MCP tools. See model/ARCHITECTURE.md. The 2D board is unchanged: it is frozen as v1 (git tag v1.5.0, branch v1).

sketchflow/
├── index.html        2D board UI + styles (v1)
├── js/               core · render · tools · input · ui · io · motion · bridge
├── model/            3D workspace (v2): index.html, js/kernel · model · views · app, tests, ARCHITECTURE.md
├── server.mjs        MCP server + local web server (Node 20+, zero dependencies): / = board, /3d/ = model
├── scripts/          setup (what SF3d_setup.bat runs) · smoke test · Claude Desktop bundle (.mcpb) · release prep
├── SF3d_setup.bat    Windows setup: install, AI apps, Ollama, publish — settings in SF3d_setup.env (from the .template)
├── build.mjs         makes single-file versions in dist/
└── dist/             sketchflow.html · sketchflow-3d.html — double-click to use offline (no AI link)

1 · Run it with Claude (MCP)

Beta: SketchFlow is on npm as sketchflow-mcp. You need Node 20 or newer. It has no dependencies; npx fetches it on first use. INSTALL.md covers every client: Claude Code, Claude Desktop (a one-click .mcpb), Cursor, VS Code, LM Studio, and local models through Ollama. It also covers the settings and testing a build before it is published.

Windows: run SF3d_setup.bat. It asks for your settings in a Notepad file, then installs SketchFlow, adds it to your AI apps and, if you like, Ollama and the public release. See INSTALL.md.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --scope user sketchflow -- npx -y sketchflow-mcp@beta

Then ask: "open the sketch board" or "open the 3D model and build a 100 × 60 × 8 plate with four M5 holes". Claude calls open_board / open_model, which opens http://localhost:7777 in your browser.

Claude Desktop: install sketchflow-<version>.mcpb from the GitHub release. Or add this in Settings → Developer → Edit config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sketchflow": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "sketchflow-mcp@beta"]
    }
  }
}

From a checkout (to develop or try changes): use node /absolute/path/to/sketchflow/server.mjs as the command, or claude mcp add sketchflow-dev -- node /absolute/path/to/sketchflow/server.mjs.

Local models (Ollama) and small context windows: add --tools=3d --brief (or --tools=2d). The model then gets one tool set and short instructions, about 3.5k tokens instead of about 12k. See INSTALL.md.

Draw on a tablet or phone while Claude runs on your computer:

"env": { "SKETCHFLOW_LAN": "1" }

With this set, open_board returns a http://<your-ip>:7777/?k=<code> link. Open it on the tablet. The pairing code stops other devices on your network from connecting.

Other settings: SKETCHFLOW_PORT (default 7777), SKETCHFLOW_NO_OPEN=1 (don't open a browser), SKETCHFLOW_EXPORT_DIR (default ~/Pictures/SketchFlow), SKETCHFLOW_TOOLS and SKETCHFLOW_BRIEF. All of them, and the matching flags, are in INSTALL.md and npx -y sketchflow-mcp@beta --help.

The loop

MCP tools:

• open_board

• look

• wait_for_sketch

• draw

• edit_items

• layers

• drawing_space

• board

• place_image

• export

• mechanism

• say

3D models with Claude

Ask: "open the 3D model and make a flange: Ø80 × 8 disc, Ø36 neck 30 tall, Ø20 bore, four Ø7 holes on a 58 mm circle, 1 mm chamfer on the rim". Claude opens http://localhost:7777/3d/ and builds it in one undoable step. You watch it appear in all four views. Then change any dimension yourself, and everything mated to it follows.

The pump housing example (examples/). Claude built it in one session using nothing but MCP calls. Load it from File → Example: Pump housing, or with model_session {action:"example", id:"pump-housing"}. It shows:

The crow shelf bracket example (examples/). A 1" × ¼" steel bar bent to 16" × 14", braced by a laser-cut ¼" crow in a Northwest Coast formline-inspired style. It was built over MCP and welded through the welding add-on: two seams, fillets a3, ISO 2553 symbols on the drawing. Load it from File → Example: Crow shelf bracket.

• a fully constrained flange sketch, with arcs, tangents, equal radii and driving dimensions (0 degrees of freedom);

• spline-profile gussets in a circular pattern, and a counterbored M6 hole pattern;

• a wedge pad with a modelled M5 tapped hole. Claude placed the hole after asking model_query for the pad's sloped face;

• text engraved flat (PUMP-01) and wrapped round the housing (SKETCHFLOW);

• a threaded neck with a knurled screw cap on a screw joint, with "TURN TO OPEN" embossed on an arc;

• four stainless M6 socket screws.

The checks Claude ran: no interference; a motion sweep of two turns of the cap with no contact; section areas; a measured 80 mm from the flange underside to the cap top; mass 597.75 g; drawing and parts-list exports.

In the browser:

• Add a shape with the toolbar: Box, Wedge, Cylinder, Cone, Sphere, Strip (a fillet strip). If a part is selected, the new shape lands on top of it, and Properties → Combine joins it, cuts it or keeps the overlap.

• Putting features on a part: select the part, then use Add to part at the top of Properties. Each one asks you to click the face (or edge) it goes on:

  • Boss: a cylinder or box joined onto a face

  • Cut: a round or square pocket

  • Hole, Text

  • Sketch on face

  • Fillet, Chamfer

  • Shell, Pattern

  The Features group in the toolbar has the same tools. Bosses, cuts, holes, text and face sketches are mated to their face, so they follow it when the part changes.

• Sketch: draw in FRONT, TOP or RIGHT with the sketch bar.

  • Lines: Line, Arc, Tangent arc and Spline, mixed freely.

    • An arc is its end point, then a point it passes through.

    • A tangent arc carries on smoothly from the last segment and stays tangent.

    • Arcs are real sketch arcs, not short segments: give them an R dimension, make two tangent or concentric, set radii equal, or turn any segment into an arc (⌒ in Properties → Sketch).

    • A spline is a smooth curve through the points you click. It leaves the last segment tangent and blends into the next one. Switch back to Line or Arc, or close the shape, to end it. One spline is one smooth face on the solid.

    • In Properties → Sketch, ∿ turns any line into a spline, and a spline's fit points can be moved, added or removed. When dimensions move a spline's ends, its fit points go with them, so the curve keeps its shape.

    • Pin a fit point so it stays put, or dimension its x or y (formulas work too).

    • Each end is auto, tangent, corner or a set angle. Auto means tangent if the spline already sets off within 45° of the line, arc or other spline it meets, and a corner otherwise. Tangent is exact, and two splines meeting at a point share one tangent.

  • Shapes: Rectangle, Circle, Slot, Polygon.

  • Snap ▾: grid on or off, with a step of 0.5–25 mm; points, corners and centres; edge midpoints; horizontal / vertical only; 15° angles. A green marker shows what you snapped to, with the length so far.

  • Undo point, Close shape, Cancel.

  Then choose Extrude, Revolve or Loft (Loft asks for the end profile).

  • Extrude options: symmetric (half each way), through all (for cuts, and it stays through as the part grows), draft (taper °), and thin (a wall of that thickness).

  • Finish open leaves the outline open: a rib or thin plate of a thickness you choose.

• Sketch on a face (On face in the toolbar, or On a face… in the sketch bar): click any flat face, inclined ones included, and a view square to it opens with the grid on the face. Then choose Extrude · join, Cut into, Cut through or New part. The result is mated to that face.

• Every flat face of a shape can be a target: a wedge's slope, an extrude's side faces, the flat ring of a revolve. That covers holes, text, bosses, cuts, sketches and mates.

• Lofts through sections, with guide curves: Properties → Loft sections & guides.

  • + section adds a profile part-way up. Give each one a height, scale, turn and offset. With smooth on, the sides run in a smooth curve through every section (no overshoot); with it off, they're straight between sections.

  • + guide adds a curve from the first section to the last, which the sides follow. Edit its points (x, y, z). One guide moves the sections, two also turn and scale them (a barrel), and three or more also skew them.

• Sweeps can follow a smooth curve through their path points (a bent tube, a handle), twist along the way, and scale down or up towards the end.

• Sketching on a curved face: click the round side of a cylinder, a tube, a revolve or any extruded circle. The face opens unrolled: across is the distance round it, up is along it. Draw lines, arcs, splines, shapes or text as on a flat face. When you finish, it is wrapped round the face and either embossed (joined, standing out by the depth) or engraved (cut in). The face doesn't have to be a cylinder primitive: its axis and radius are fitted from the facets. On a cylinder part, the wrap follows the diameter when it changes.

  • Any other curved face (a sphere, a cone, a loft, a fillet) opens a view square to the surface where you clicked. What you draw or type is projected onto the surface and embossed or engraved square to it. It's built on the part as it is at that point in the history, and it moves with the part.

• Threads are real geometry: an ISO 60° profile with a chamfered lead-in, so they print, mesh and show in sections.

  • More ▾ → Bolt (threaded)…: M2–M24, length, hex or socket head, thread length. Mate its seat to the face it goes into.

  • More ▾ → Nut (threaded)…: hex, round or knurled. It can be custom (any diameter and pitch), e.g. a screw cap for a bottle neck.

  • Thread a cylinder or tube: Properties → Thread, an ISO size or a custom pitch, over all or part of its length, from the top or bottom. Bore makes it a tube.

  • Left hand (a tick box on threaded cylinders, bolts, nuts and modelled tapped holes) makes a left-hand thread.

  • Tapped holes: the hole wizard's thread choice is drill only (just the tap-drill hole) or modelled (the thread is cut).

  • A nut on its bolt, or a cap on its neck, meshes with 0.1 mm clearance and doesn't count as interference.

• More ▾ (in the Add bar):

  • Spring / coil: wire Ø, coil radius, pitch, turns, hand.

  • Plane on a face: a reference plane on a face, with a gap and a tilt. Sketch on it, mate to it, or split with it.

  • Fillet strip, and the add-ons (gears, and the weld / join wizard).

• Split (Features): cut a part with a plane, keeping the side below, above, or both as two parts.

• Mates take a tilt too, so parts and planes can sit at an angle to a face.

• Sketch constraints: a drawn polyline gets horizontal / vertical relations and its first point fixed automatically, so a sloppy sketch comes out square. In Properties → Sketch, give any segment a driving dimension, or relate two segments (parallel, perpendicular, equal, angle). The status line says how many degrees of freedom are left and names any conflicting constraint.

• Mate (M): click the part, then its connector, then the target connector.

• Union / Subtract / Intersect: click the target, then the tool.

• Fillet / Chamfer: set the size and click near an edge. Outer edges are trimmed and inner corners are filled; round edges get the treatment all the way round. On the seam between two parts, a fillet merges them into one piece.

• Weld: click where two separate parts meet. The bead joins them and they stay separate parts (E pulls the assembly apart to show it). Mixing materials that can't be welded gets a warning.

• Weld wizard: click the seam where two parts meet (or one part, then the other). It reads the joint (butt, tee, corner, lap; thicknesses; torch access and welding position on each side) and the materials, asks what service the joint is for, and shows a light, a regular and a heavy suggestion side by side: the edge preparation (square, V, X, bevel, K, J, U), root gap, process, filler, position, quality level and inspection, time (fit-up, prep and machining, welding, grinding, inspection), cost at your labour rate, ease, the reasons, and a section through the joint with its ISO 2553 symbol. Materials that do not weld together get bonded, brazed, filled or fibre-tabbed joints instead (or pick one). Build cuts the preparation, opens the gap, places the weld metal and pins the weld symbol to the part. Drawings show the symbols with a weld schedule. Change a thickness later (any size field takes a formula, e.g. =1/8*25.4), then select the weld symbol and press Redo for new sizes.

• Pattern (P, or Properties → Pattern…): a row, grid, circle or mirror of the selected part or feature. Copies follow the original.

• Material & mass in Properties: pick a material, or set density, fill %, part no., supplier and notes. With nothing selected you see the total mass, the centre of gravity (the toolbar button marks it in the views), whether the model stands, and a parts list button.

• Add-ons menu: gears (single, pair, train, planetary, and an advisor that picks the right gear for the job and the process). Drop your own into model/addons/: see model/ADDONS.md.

• Extend to a part: a size can reach another part instead of being a number, and it follows that part when it moves, tilts or changes. Use the size's link button → Extend to a part… and click the part. Heights (box, cylinder and cone height, a blind extrude's length) grow straight up: a bar under an inclined plate grows until its flat top just touches the plate. Widths and depths (box width and depth, a sketched rectangle's width and height) grow sideways. The face toward the part you click reaches it and the opposite face stays put (on its anchors, for a rectangle that follows corners). Properties lets you switch which face grows. Each one meets the part at its nearest point (touch), at its middle (centre) or everywhere (cover), with a gap if you want one. One part can extend several sizes at once, e.g. height up to the deck, width to the wall and depth to the wedge. Type a size to set it yourself.

• Cuts through several parts: a cut removes material from its own part, plus any part ticked under Properties → Boolean → Also cuts. That list shows the parts in its way. Cut through on a face ticks every part it goes through when you make it, so a hole goes through a plate and the deck above it. A through cut goes all the way, so its length isn't used, and its preview is shown only across the parts it cuts.

• Follow corners: while sketching on a face, snap a corner of a rectangle (or a point of an outline) to a corner of another part, and it follows that corner from then on. The snap label says follows it; mirror and pattern copies count. A rectangle snapped to two opposite corners spans them: a deck on a wedge ramp stays the length of the slope and the width across both wedges when you change them. For a shape already drawn, use Properties → Follows → Follow corners… and click the corners. Stop following releases it. Circles and polygons follow a centre (and a rim point), and slots follow their two ends. Sketches drawn in FRONT / TOP / RIGHT follow too. Your sizes win: type a size and it is yours. The corners still place the shape, lined up on the first corner, and Follow again hands that size back. A driving dimension takes over its place.

• Click any orange dimension in the 2D views to change it. If another part had the same size running the same way, you're offered Make it follow: from then on it keeps step with the leader (shown teal, as =90).

• Any size can be a formula: type =plate.depth, =plate.depth - 10 or =#wall * 2 in Properties (the link button beside each size picks a leader from a list). Model variables (#wall…) are in Properties with nothing selected.

• Placement can follow sizes too: a mate's gap, angle, tilt and slides take formulas. For example, slide x =plate.width / 2 - 10 keeps a part 10 mm in from the edge as the plate grows. Changing where a part is mated keeps its joint.

• Measure (G): click two dots in a 2D view. A hole centre then a face dot (the middle of an edge in that view) gives the off-edge distance, measured square to the edge; two points offer horizontal / vertical / aligned. Type a value to make it driving: the hole moves and stays at that distance from the edge when the part changes size.

• The feature list shows By part (each part with its holes, edges, welds and arrays) or History (the order you made things). In History, drag rows to reorder and drag the blue rollback bar to see the model as it was (new features go in at the bar). The ⋯ / right-click menu: suppress, duplicate (Ctrl D), linked instance, pattern, move, delete.

• Profile sketches: Polyline, Rectangle (rounded corners), Circle, Slot, Polygon (two clicks). Then Extrude, Cut through the part underneath, or Revolve. The shape's sizes stay editable dimensions.

• Hole: pick a size (M2–M16) and type (simple, counterbore, countersink, tapped, heat-set insert) and fit (close / normal / loose / print), then click faces. Each hole is dimensioned from its nearest edges; click a dimension to move it.

• Shell… (Properties) hollows any part to an even wall thickness, open on one of its faces or closed. This includes booleans, filleted parts and imported meshes. Every face moves inward by the wall (an offset, not a scale), so walls stay even on any shape, with mitred corners. A rounding smaller than the wall gets a sharp inner corner. A boss or rib thinner than two walls stays solid, and a note names it. A cut that would leave a section thinner than two walls is refused, by name.

• Text (T): type the words, the height and depth, then pick emboss (a boolean add standing on the face) or engrave (a boolean remove cut into it), and a path: straight, round an arc (reading over the top), or the inside of an arc (reading along the bottom, as on a badge). Click a flat face to place it. The words, sizes, radius, angle, alignment, or a polyline path are all editable later. The built-in font is a single-stroke engraving font, the kind CNC engravers and laser markers use. It covers capitals, digits and the usual symbols, including Ø ± ° ×; lower case prints as capitals.

• Interference check (I): one click lists every pair of parts that overlap, with the overlap volume, and shows the overlap in red. Parts that only touch, and welds on the parts they join, don't count.

• Motion (J): make a mated part a joint (Properties → Joint: revolute, slider, cylindrical, planar or screw, with limits), then drag its slider or press play. A screw joint turns and advances by its pitch per turn, so a nut or cap runs along its thread in step (keeping the thread phase). Its pitch is read from the thread, negative for a left-hand one, and you can change it. Meshed gears turn with it. Keep this pose makes it the model's position. Collisions are checked as it moves: parts that hit turn red, and stop at contact halts play at the first touch.

• Section (X): cut the model along X, Y or Z with a slider; the cut shows hatched.

• Configurations: add variables, use them in sizes (=#len), then Add configuration for each size; switch from the toolbar. Configurations can also switch features off.

• File → Export STEP (.step)… writes an AP214 file for CAD (Fusion, SolidWorks, Onshape, FreeCAD…):

  • Every part is a solid B-rep, not a mesh. Flat faces are merged into single faces, and curved surfaces are kept as their facets.

  • Parts are named and coloured, and their material is recorded. Several parts make an assembly, and a part repeated by a pattern is written once and placed each time.

  • It is vetted before it is saved: SketchFlow reads the file back and checks it is a closed, consistently oriented solid whose volume, surface area and size match the model. The toast says what passed. Any hairline gaps a boolean left are closed and listed.

  • With threaded parts you choose plain threads (cosmetic, as CAD systems exchange them; about 6× smaller) or modelled threads.

• File → Save version… / Versions…; Import STL / OBJ / STEP… (STEP with planar faces, such as SketchFlow's own; curved CAD surfaces aren't read); Preview drawing / Export drawing (SVG, DXF): an A4/A3/A2 sheet with TOP / FRONT / RIGHT + isometric, hidden lines, dimensions, parts list and title block. With two or more parts the isometric becomes an exploded isometric with numbered balloons tied to the parts list (repeated parts are one item, with their quantity). Exploded in the preview bar turns it off.

• Share (toolbar) opens shared editing. Everyone with the link edits one model live, through the SketchFlow server.

  • Safe by design. A change travels as a diff down to single parameters, so two people changing different sizes of one part both keep their change. A change that would overwrite someone else's is refused, with the reason, and never applied over it. The reasons are: the same field, two reorders at once, or a part someone else deleted or relies on.

  • Undo is yours alone. It undoes your own last change, and only while nobody has changed the same things since. It never touches anyone else's work.

  • You can see each other. The panel lists who's here and what each person has selected or is working on. Their parts are tinted in their colour in the views and marked in the feature list. Properties says when someone else is on the part you're editing. This is a soft lock: you can still edit, and a real clash is refused.

  • Activity shows every change, who made it, and whether it was merged or refused. Edits Claude makes over MCP appear as "Claude (via you)", and the AI stays with the person who runs it, even when others join.

  • Offline-safe. If the connection drops, your changes wait and are sent on reconnect, checked like any other. Rooms are saved on the server, so a restart loses nothing.

  • File → New, Open or Example while shared asks first, because it would replace the model for everyone. Leave · keep a copy keeps the model as your own.

  • Other computers: start the server with SKETCHFLOW_LAN=1 and send them the link with the pairing code (?k=…).

• View ▾ holds:

  • layouts: all four views, or one view;

  • fit, zoom in and out;

  • hidden lines, dimensions, pulled apart, centre of gravity;

  • whether dragging in 3D orbits or pans;

  • the theme.

  The view cube: click a face, edge or corner. Check has Clashes (interference), Section and Motion.

• Everything has a button or menu item; keys are only shortcuts:

  • 0–4 layouts, F fit, H hidden lines, D dimensions, E pull apart

  • S sketch, M mate, G measure, T text, P pattern

  • J motion, X section, I clashes

  • Ctrl D duplicate (also in Properties), Delete (also in Properties)

Related MCP server: Battenmark

2 · Or just draw

Open dist/sketchflow.html (works offline). Or run node server.mjs --serve and open http://localhost:7777. Without the AI link, Send copies your sketch to the clipboard so you can paste it into any chat.

How it flows

• Pen: hold still at the end of a stroke and it snaps to a clean line, arc, circle, ellipse, triangle, rectangle or polygon. Keep dragging to adjust it. Tap the Pen button again to cycle Pen → Pencil → Marker → Brush (pressure-sensitive with a stylus).

• Snap & join (M): starts and ends lock onto existing joints (ring = join) or onto a line (✕ = T-junction).

• 3D primitives (Shapes → 3D): box, cylinder, cone, sphere, pyramid, prism.

  • Built from real 3D geometry. Visible faces are separate closed faces, so Fill shading and text on a surface work on them. Hidden edges are dashed (toggle Hidden edges), and round shapes get centre lines.

  • Drag to size; Shift gives equal sides. Clicking any part selects the whole primitive (Alt-click picks one part).

  • In 3-view / 4-view, drag inside the FRONT view and the top and side views draw themselves, aligned. 4-view also adds the object to a shared 3D scene in the top-right quadrant.

• Placing 3D primitives (two steps):

  1. Base. Start on a snapped point.

     • From a corner (joint, grid or any point): drag to the opposite corner, and the base stretches to fit exactly between them on the isometric ground plane. Snap both to a box's top-face corners and the base matches that face.

     • From a centre (start on a ⊕): the base grows equally in every direction. Round shapes take the radius from your drag.

     • Base from: Auto / Corner / Centre in the strip. Alt forces centre and Shift makes the base square.

  2. Height. Move up and click (it snaps to other objects' points and levels so heights can match), or just type a number and press Enter. Esc cancels.

  • A height dimension is added that drives the primitive: tap its number, type a new height, and the primitive rebuilds from its stored sizes. Connected lines, shape fills and surface text stay attached. Toggle Height dim off if you don't want it.

  • Moving or scaling a primitive keeps its sizes. Rotating or mirroring it, or drawing it in 3-view, turns it into plain lines.

  • 2D shapes started on a centre ⊕ also grow equally both ways.

• Snaps & connectors:

  • Ends snap to joints, ▲ midpoints of lines and ⊕ centres of shapes (circles, faces, polygons, arcs).

  • A line that lands on a midpoint or centre stays connected: move the shape and the line follows. Drop a dragged end somewhere else to disconnect.

  • ⊥ Perp lands a line perpendicular on another line, or squares off a line you start on a line.

  • Toggle each in the Pen, Shapes and Joints strips.

• Line types: Solid, Dashed (hidden edges), Centre (dash-dot), and Construction. Construction lines are guides: they snap and show on screen, but never print or export (unless you tick Include construction lines) and never block fills. Dashed and Centre lines don't block fills either. Change a selection's line type from the Select strip.

• Joints (J):

  • drag a dot to bend; everything joined there follows

  • drop it on another dot to join them

  • drag along a line to add a bend

  • double-tap a dot to remove it

  • hold Alt to detach

• Select (V): tap or box-select, drag, scale from a corner, rotate with the top dot. Lines joined to the selection stretch to stay attached. With items selected, tapping a colour recolours them.

• Drawing spaces (P):

  • Free

  • Flat grid

  • Isometric

  • 1-, 2- or 3-point perspective (drag the coloured vanishing-point pips)

  • 3-view (Top / Front / Right side with alignment guides)

  • 4-view (3-view + an isometric quadrant)

  Strokes you draw roughly along a guide direction lock to it.

• Dimensions (D): drag between joints. Tap the number and type a value, and the geometry moves to match. Horizontal and vertical dimensions stretch the whole edge. Set units and scale in the strip (px, mm, cm, m, in, ft). In a drawing space, extension lines follow the planes: isometric axes, or the vanishing point in perspective. The number lies in that plane. Drag the number to switch planes, or set Ext lines → Square for classic perpendicular dimensions.

• Text (T): six fonts, bold/italic, size and colour, in three modes:

  • Free: text goes where you tap.

  • Along a line: tap a stroke to write along it. Drag it with Select to slide it along or lift it off; Detach / Attach to line switch between modes.

  • On a surface: tap inside any 4-sided face (an isometric box side, a perspective plane, a rectangle) and the text is mapped flat onto that plane. It auto-fits the face and stays attached when you drag the face's corners. Drag it with Select to slide it across the face. Turn on face rotates it 90°; Take off surface makes it free text. You can also select a text and a 4-sided shape and press Put on surface.

  • Isometric and flat faces keep the text as crisp vectors (also in SVG). Perspective faces warp it through a fine mesh (embedded as an image in SVG).

• Fill (F):

  • Tap fills any enclosed region, even one formed by several lines.

  • Press and hold (watch the ring) makes a shape fill. It's a vector tied to the surrounding outline's corners, curve points and line crossings, so it reshapes when you drag, bend or move those lines. Holes inside stay empty.

  • Tap an existing fill or line to recolour it.

  • Dimensions and text don't block fills: a fill flows straight through them.

  • Moving a shape fill on its own lets go of the outline.

• Eraser (E):

  • Cut lines splits vectors exactly where you erase

  • Whole items removes anything you touch

  • Photo pixels erases inside images

• Import (drop, paste or button):

  • As is

  • Remove background (instant and offline; tap to remove more)

  • AI cut-out (online, loads @imgly/background-removal, AGPL-licensed, ~40 MB the first time)

  • Trace over it: a faded reference layer plus an ink layer, with the lightbox on

• Layers: a tree of layer → type group → item.

  • Every item you draw gets its own row automatically, grouped as Lines, Strokes, Rectangles, Circles, Triangles, Polygons, Fills, Text, Dimensions and Images.

  • Each row shows a thumbnail of the shape, its size or font, a colour swatch, hide, lock and delete. Double-click a name to rename it.

  • Clicking a row selects that item and highlights it on the canvas; hovering a row highlights it too. Clicking a group header selects the whole group.

  • Recolour from the swatches at any level (one item, a whole group, or the whole layer) using a pop-up of the current palette, recent colours or a custom colour.

  • Colour by type gives each type its own colour from the selected palette, chosen to be as different as possible from each other and readable on the paper. Auto keeps new items colour-coded as you draw. Palette switches presets.

  • Layer-level options: visibility, lock, reference (shown on screen, left out of exports), opacity, 8 blend modes, duplicate, merge, reorder.

  • Background is a pinned layer that always sits under everything and fills the canvas. It has a colour swatch, paper presets, and an eye that makes the canvas transparent while remembering the colour. It exports as its own layer in SVG, ORA and the layers ZIP.

  • Lightbox (L) fades the layers below the one you're on.

• Motion (X):

  • every item is a rigid link; joints shared by two items are pins

  • Pin fixes joints to the ground

  • Motor drives a link around its pivot

  • Trace records a joint's path

  • press ▶; Keep path saves the traced curve as a dashed line

  • the board warns you if the mechanism locks up

• Recall: every board autosaves in this browser (IndexedDB) and stays in Hub → Recall. A new board never replaces the old one. Settings, palette, brush sizes and theme are remembered too.

• Undo everything:

  • Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z, 2-finger tap / 3-finger tap

  • or drag the history scrubber at the top

Menus that stay out of the way

Keys

Export formats

Privacy

Everything runs on your machine. The server listens on 127.0.0.1 only, unless you turn on LAN mode, which requires the pairing code. Board commands need a random per-run token. Boards are stored only in your browser. The only network request the app makes is the optional AI cut-out download.

Roadmap

These build on the same joint model:

• an animation timeline (keyframes of joint positions, onion skin)

• smart connectors that stay attached to shapes

• slider and prismatic joints, gears and springs in the motion solver

• the 3D profile sketcher's geometric constraints (parallel, perpendicular, equal length) on the 2D board too

• sending a 2D board sketch to the 3D workspace as a profile, and projecting 3D views back onto the board

• 3D: see "What is not there yet" in model/ARCHITECTURE.md: STEP with exact curved surfaces (cylinders, cones) and import of curved CAD files, branches for shared models, live cursors

Tests

npm test                                                            # 3D kernel, model (incl. the pump housing example), gears, welding, add-ons, collisions, the MCP op reference, STEP, shared editing
node build.mjs                                                      # rebuild dist/