FreeCAD in the Browser

(magik.net)

26 points | by cui 1 hour ago

7 comments

  • ebspelman 43 minutes ago
    The launch graphic says "Ported end-to-end by Fable, an AI agent" and it definitely feels that way. Buggy, glitchy, needs some love and human eyes before it's really usable.
    • NavinF 42 minutes ago
      FreeCAD on desktop is much the same in my experience. If LLMs were mainstream a few years ago I would have assumed the UI was 100% AI generated with zero human input besides a oneshot prompt.
      • cui 31 minutes ago
        If Solidworks and Onshape were born after the birth of LLMs, they'd probably be glitchy as hell.
  • dang 18 minutes ago
    Recent and related:

    LibreCAD in the Browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48755075 - July 2026 (17 comments)

  • s1mon 1 hour ago
    Onshape is free in the browser as long as you are not doing commercial work. It’s a professional system from the founders of Solidworks that competes with all the top CAD tools.
    • throwup238 43 minutes ago
      > It’s a professional system from the founders of Solidworks that competes with all the top CAD tools.

      Because it's built on Parasolid, the same geometric kernel as everyone else. With ACIS pretty much out the door, almost all the professional CAD packages are just window dressing on the same CG implementation.

      • SequoiaHope 13 minutes ago
        Agreed. I’m not OP but for six months I’ve been using Claude to build a from-scratch CAD kernel based on Rust and WASM, MIT licensed.

        The actual UI still needs a lot of work, but I’ve been focused on the kernel. Fable has helped a lot though Opus was already making great headway.

        I’m an OnShape power user going back about ten years, Solidworks before that. I need a CAD system that absolutely works. There is a lot of work to do still, and it still seems impossible to succeed, but I’ve been very happy with where things have been going with it lately.

        It’s serverless, local, and browser based. You can load the latest binary from GitHub pages here:

        https://sequoia-hope.github.io/waffle-iron/

        Click the Assay menu to see the kernel test cases we’ve been using so far. Rapidly closing on 100% support!

  • emmelaich 21 minutes ago
    Amazing. How much did it cost?
    • cui 19 minutes ago
      It's open source.
  • dd8601fn 57 minutes ago
    Sounds cool. Doesn't work.
    • cui 55 minutes ago
      Seems it's only supporting Chrome at the moment.
  • techbro92 1 hour ago
    Why would I want to run this in the browser vs locally?
    • SequoiaHope 11 minutes ago
      Browser can be local. What’s nice about browser based is that browser based programs can run on every device. Though it sounds like this one requires chrome which seems weird to me.
    • gkhartman 1 hour ago
      Probably nice to have for those with low income that only have a Chromebook.
    • fragmede 1 hour ago
      Because then it doesn't matter what you're running locally, as long as you've got a supported browser (Chrome, I'm guessing). It means it doesn't have to make a difference if you have a Window 10 desktop or a MacBook Air or a Chromebook. Go to the web page and look at this CAD.
      • cui 1 hour ago
        This. The browser as a universal platform.
        • Evidlo 30 minutes ago
          Like electron, but it's fine this way for some reason.