CADCraft positions itself as a free, open-source alternative to AutoCAD rather than a lightweight viewer. The project is a clean-room rebuild written from scratch in Rust, aiming to reproduce the drafting workflow that architects, engineers, students and makers already know. It is released under MIT or Apache-2.0 licensing, requires no account to draw, and runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD and the web.
The core experience centers on a command-line-driven editor where familiar commands such as LINE, CIRCLE, OFFSET and TRIM work as expected. Files can be exchanged in DWG, DXF, PDF, SVG and PNG formats, and rendering is GPU-accelerated through the Rust engine. Beyond human use, the project exposes MCP, JSON control and a CLI, allowing scripts and AI agents to drive drawings programmatically.
Deployment is flexible: users can download a native build for their desktop platform or run the same application in a browser via WebAssembly. An optional CADCraft Online Pro plan adds cloud drawings, version history and share links at $4.9 per month or $29 per year, while the editor itself remains free and open source.
The site also provides comparison material against Autodesk AutoCAD and hands-on tutorials, which help newcomers map existing knowledge onto the new tool. Those evaluating it should note the current v0.8.0 release is in active development, so testing on real project files is advisable before committing.
Overall, CADCraft is a credible open-source option for drafters
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