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Changelog

Notable changes to SimpleCAD. Restart FreeCAD after updating to load new commands, and reconnect an MCP client to refresh its tool list.

0.38.0

Changed

  • The source is organized into packages by purpose: core, modeling, surfaces, mesh, repair, inspection, document, jobs, mcp and gui (with gui/tools and gui/previews). Tests are split into tests/unit, tests/gui and tests/benchmarks. Saved models store no module paths, so existing .FCStd files open unchanged, and scripts/simplecad_mcp.py keeps its path for existing MCP client setups.
  • The README is a short project page. The full manual is now docs/user-guide.md, and version notes live here.
  • The documentation is also published as a searchable site on GitHub Pages, built from docs/ on every change to main. Its Tools section has an entry for every tool, with steps, options, keys and a short clip.

Added

  • Copy, cut and paste whole objects with ⌘C, ⌘X and ⌘V (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) in the 3D view and the Model tab. Paste puts the copy in place and starts Move to place it; cut and paste are one Undo step each.
  • Drawing feedback. Line shows the current segment's length beside it; Rectangle shows its width and height beside its first two sides; Circle, Polygon and Sphere show their radius. A typed size is shown there until the pointer moves.
  • Arrow keys choose the drawing plane, as in SketchUp: → YZ, ← XZ, ↑ XY, ↓ back to Auto. After a Line's first click they lock its direction instead.
  • Dark viewport style with a ground grid, X/Y/Z axes, camera-following lights, a configurable default Face color and lighter hover and selection colours. It is on by default and can be turned off in Settings.
  • Draw: Surface mode for Line, Rectangle, Circle, Polygon, Arc and 2 Point Arc. Drawings wrap across the connected faces of one object and divide them into selectable regions.
  • Surface group for curved faces: Draw on surface, Offset face, Shell / Thicken, Draft faces, Delete & heal faces, Remove rounds, Fill hole and Unwrap face, plus Pattern and a Curvature map.
  • Make mesh editable can fit smooth surfaces and analytic cylinders, giving far fewer faces than the flat-face rebuild.
  • Mesh region · Move / Rotate / Extrude edits patches of a raw mesh with a live collision preview.
  • Stretch mesh / Move region with draggable, rotatable stretch planes.
  • Measure with placed dimensions; smart selection of holes, edge loops, flat regions and smooth surfaces; Isolate selection.
  • Mirror, Elongate / Make Elliptical, Heal to precision, and a Modeling precision setting that mesh conversion also uses.
  • Slice can cut at a picked face; studs and sockets are laid out along the cut face with automatic spacing.
  • Move and Copy snap to hole and circle centers.
  • Commands that need a selection are greyed out until it is right, and flat-only tools are greyed out for curved geometry.

Fixed

  • A Push/Pull that ends within 0.005 mm of an existing flat level ends exactly on it, so Delete no longer opens the solid at a hairline step. Deleting an existing hairline step folds it away.
  • A face click in Move, Copy or Move Vertex lands exactly on that face.
  • Line stops when a segment closes a loop into a face.
  • Many speed-ups for drawing, hovering, selecting and deleting on dense converted parts.

0.37.8

Adds Fit Circle / Cylinder (Y). Select a complete faceted circular edge loop to create a native circle edge, or select both circular rims or the complete faceted cylindrical wall to create a native cylinder. The operation is conservative, keeps the source object unless the whole object was selected for replacement, and is undoable.

0.37.7

Improves Make mesh editable for closed cylindrical STL components and circular holes inside planar bodies. When the triangle normals, circular rim and enclosed volume agree within conservative checks, a complete component becomes one native analytic cylinder, while a verified through-hole is cut with an analytic cylinder after its surrounding planar faces are rebuilt. Partial, fused, noisy or ambiguous curved regions keep the faceted fallback so conversion never silently changes their shape. Reconvert the original mesh to benefit; existing editable objects are unchanged.

0.37.6

Improves Pull contact on imported surfaces. A pulled straight edge within 0.005 mm of a remainder face is projected onto that face and imprinted when it crosses the perimeter, so the contact remains selectable as divided regions. This local contact tolerance does not relax solid validity, area or volume checks.

0.37.5

Speeds up Push/Pull on dense editable STL surfaces. Preview setup avoids rebuilding unedited surfaces and rejects unrelated geometry before testing previous extrusions. Height snapping uses indexed seams and resolves only the necessary cursor hits, including overlapping edges. Commit preserves native remainder topology and still validates the output. No reconversion is needed.

0.37.4

Speeds up editing dense open shells, including existing editable STL conversions. Deletion reuses unchanged topology and validates the finished result once. Drawing within one shell face updates that face and its shared boundary without intersecting unrelated surfaces. Triangle completion uses indexed adjacency; sidebar area details are calculated on hover.

0.37.3

Speeds up edge deletion on dense solids by replacing only the merged faces, checking nearby topology and reusing the sidebar face icon. On the tested 2,237-face frame, deletion including redraw improved from about 2.5 s to 1.3 s.

0.37.2

Makes region selection and edge deletion faster on dense editable STL models, using indexed lookup instead of repeated edge and face scans.

0.37.1

Fixes Make mesh editable for STL surfaces with small coordinate deviations. Flat regions are reconstructed within the selected Surface / repair tolerance, including holes, before CAD faces are built. Reconvert the original mesh; existing converted objects are unchanged.

0.37.0

Adds the optional Triangular glue seam to Split mesh. A raised ridge on one side fits a matching V-shaped groove on the other to help align glued parts.

0.36.0

Adds Split mesh… for cutting an STL directly into two mesh objects.

0.35.0

Adds Make mesh editable… for imported STL meshes. Conversion runs in a cancellable background process, combines coplanar triangles, and creates editable Part geometry with the original mesh kept as a hidden backup.

0.34.1

Fixes drawing from free line endpoints and midpoints in 3D. In Auto, Circle, Rectangle, Polygon, Arc, 2 Point Arc and Sphere place their first point exactly on the target, including above or below XY.

0.34.0

Adds Bend / Soft Deform (N), with cached previews, a surface detail control, preserved face appearance and visibility, Undo, and simplecad_deform over MCP.

0.33.0

Adds Scale / Stretch (K), Loft (Q) and Sweep (W), with previews, one-step Undo and MCP tools.

0.32.0

Adds Move Vertex (V), also available over MCP as simplecad_move_vertex.

0.30.2

Fixes Line divisions across rims and faces with holes. One inner-to-outer connection remains a line; a second connection at another corner closes a separate selectable region.

0.30.1

Fixes Line's undefined curve type error when a scene contains a sphere or spherical recess.

0.30.0

Adds Offset for flat faces, straight edges, arcs and circles.

Models made with older versions

  • Circles from 0.10.0 that overlap the original face: retrace the circle once with Circle (O), snapping to the old rim. The old disk is absorbed into the original face in one Undo step.
  • Triangles drawn before face division: retrace either of the two segments with Line, snapping to its endpoints, to divide the underlying face.
  • An incorrect vertex-to-vertex connection from an older version: undo it or delete its line, then redraw it.