Releases & changelog

Designs saved in 0.22.0 use format 35 and don't open in 0.21.0 or older.

Highlights

• Render workspace (first release): a new Render tab with GPU rendering, studio lighting, materials, and image export (#6050, #5494).
• Frames: a profile library and frame members along sketch lines (#4004).
• Holes: place a hole by distances from reference edges, snap to face and round-edge centres, and drag placed holes. Tapped holes gain metric fine, UNC/UNF and G/Rp catalogues (#2931, #2912, #4178).
• 3D mouse: driver choice, guided calibration, and button mapping (#3825).
• Assemblies: the first part is grounded, and free joint chains can be dragged (#2805).
• Control channel and MCP are on by default, with a setting to turn them off (#5561).

Modelling and sketching

• Mirror and pattern can use a pattern or mirror feature as the source (#3998).
• A spherical shell revolves into a solid with a void (#4182).
• Extrude switches to To Object when you pick a face, vertex or plane off the profile (#2855).
• Press Pull sends curved faces to Offset Face (#3463).
• Coil parameters can be shown and edited (#3915).
• Pressing a sketch tool's shortcut again cycles its creation modes (#3564).
• Equal works with three or more curves (#5139).
• Trim cuts a line at its tangent point on a circle (#5163).
• The Line tool snaps a diameter through a circle's centre (#4327).
• Slots and 2-point circles take typed dimensions (#4318, #3335).
• Cancel Sketch leaves a sketch without keeping its changes (#3938).

Interface

• The browser's view is saved with the design, with an option to hide the origin by default (#1849).
• Design tabs can be reordered by dragging (#3188).
• Picking a body in the viewport scrolls the browser to it (#3081).

…

Designs saved in 0.21.0 use format 34 and don't open in 0.20.0 or older.

Standing imports up

• STEP and IGES files ask before they turn: a file is never turned without asking. A SolidWorks file gets the stand-up offer with "Stand it up" as the default and a line saying why. (#5655).
• Turn Up Axis: right-click a component or imported part › Turn Up Axis › "Y up → Z up" or "Z up → Y up", in one undo step, any time after import (#5655).
• Sketch after standing up: a sketch on an origin plane picked in the view uses the plane as shown after the import was stood up (#5659).

Big assemblies

• Hover and selection highlights of whole bodies reuse the model's own triangles: on a 147-body assembly, hovering the top Browser row took 9 ms instead of 519 ms and copies no triangles instead of 70 MB (#5109).
• Parameters stays responsive in designs with hundreds of features (#4549); the Keyboard Shortcuts page draws only the rows on screen (#4919).
• Model cache: a design too big for its file keeps a thinned cache instead of none, so it reopens without evaluating everything (#4882).
• Agents: a whole-design measure reads a copy off the window thread (#4614).

New

…

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).

What's new in SolidCraft 0.21.0-nightly.20261024.75.1 is listed below, and the

ROADMAP lists

the known limitations. Designs from every earlier version open in this one.

Upgrading from 0.7 or earlier. 0.8 changed the Linux app ID to ai.storyteller.solidcraft:

flatpak update offers to replace the old app, and the .deb, .rpm and AppImage remove the old

menu entry.

Upgrading from 0.5 or earlier. 0.6 renamed SolveCraft to SolidCraft and made the zip

container the default save format. .solvecraft designs, old settings folders and

SOLVECRAFT_* variables are still picked up, and solvecraft-cli still forwards to

solidcraft-cli. Want plain JSON? Use File ▸ Save As JSON… or --save design.json. On

macOS, replace SolveCraft.app with SolidCraft.app. Details:

compatibility notes.

Documentation, the browser app and the Flatpak feed use the SolidCraft project Pages URLs.

Which file?

• Windows: SolidCraft-0.21.0-nightly.20261024.75.1-windows-x64.exe runs as is. Or install the .msi, or unzip the

-portable.zip (x64, x86 and arm64).

• macOS 11+ (Apple silicon and Intel): open the .dmg and drag SolidCraft.app onto Applications.

…

Designs saved in 0.21.0-rc.2 use format 34 and don't open in 0.21.0-rc.1, 0.20.0 or older.

Standing imports up

• SolidWorks files ask before they turn: rc.1 stood SolidWorks STEP and IGES files up on its own, which was wrong for files already saved Z up. Now a file is never turned without asking: a SolidWorks file gets the stand-up offer with "Stand it up" as the default and a line saying why. The "Stand up Y-up files automatically" preference is gone (#5655).
• Turn Up Axis: right-click a component or imported part › Turn Up Axis › "Y up → Z up" or "Z up → Y up", in one undo step, any time after import (#5655).
• Sketch after standing up: a sketch on an origin plane picked in the view uses the plane as shown after the import was stood up (#5659).

Big assemblies

• Hover and selection highlights of whole bodies reuse the model's own triangles: on a 147-body assembly, hovering the top Browser row took 9 ms instead of 519 ms and copies no triangles instead of 70 MB (#5109).
• Parameters stays responsive in designs with hundreds of features (#4549); the Keyboard Shortcuts page draws only the rows on screen (#4919).
• Model cache: a design too big for its file keeps a thinned cache instead of none, so it reopens without evaluating everything (#4882).

…

Designs saved in 0.21.0-rc.1 use format 33 and don't open in 0.20.0 or older.

Release candidate. This is a pre-release of 0.21.0 for testing; 0.20.0 stays the current release, and the in-app update check keeps offering it. About 150 more reviewed pull requests are landing over the next hours and will go into rc.2 and the final 0.21.0. Please report anything that looks off.

SolidCraft is open-source parametric 3D CAD in Rust: sketch, constrain, extrude, and change a parameter to watch the timeline rebuild. Website · documentation · try it in the browser · Discord · issues.

Why 0.21.0: a minor release with a new design format (associative motion traces, and freed body names that aren't reused), faster and more robust drawing, and STEP and IGES files from SolidWorks that stand up on their own.

Rendering and graphics

• Cached viewport pictures: a repaint over a still view reuses the last picture, and the scene draws into its own target under a 1× window pass. On a 147-body, 8.5-million-triangle assembly, GPU time while moving the pointer over empty space dropped from 1752 ms to 1006 ms over 8 s (#5187).
• AMD on Direct3D 12: bodies draw again with 4× anti-aliasing; the ground shadow no longer sends every frame through the transparency path (#5255).

…

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).

What's new in SolidCraft 0.20.0-nightly.20261023.69.1 is listed below, and the

ROADMAP lists

the known limitations. Designs from every earlier version open in this one.

Upgrading from 0.7 or earlier. 0.8 changed the Linux app ID to ai.storyteller.solidcraft:

flatpak update offers to replace the old app, and the .deb, .rpm and AppImage remove the old

menu entry.

Upgrading from 0.5 or earlier. 0.6 renamed SolveCraft to SolidCraft and made the zip

container the default save format. .solvecraft designs, old settings folders and

SOLVECRAFT_* variables are still picked up, and solvecraft-cli still forwards to

solidcraft-cli. Want plain JSON? Use File ▸ Save As JSON… or --save design.json. On

macOS, replace SolveCraft.app with SolidCraft.app. Details:

compatibility notes.

Documentation, the browser app and the Flatpak feed use the SolidCraft project Pages URLs.

Which file?

• Windows: SolidCraft-0.20.0-nightly.20261023.69.1-windows-x64.exe runs as is. Or install the .msi, or unzip the

-portable.zip (x64, x86 and arm64).

• macOS 11+ (Apple silicon and Intel): open the .dmg and drag SolidCraft.app onto Applications.

…

Designs saved in 0.20.0 use format 31 and don't open in 0.19.0 or older.

Why 0.20.0: a minor release with a new File view and Preferences, much faster display of big assemblies, and a new design format for construction-axis references. Changes since 0.19.0.

New interface

• File view: the home page is redesigned as the File view (#3822).
• Preferences are redesigned with the shared UI components (#4608).

Faster big assemblies

• Instancing and level of detail: repeated parts are drawn as instances, and far-away bodies with fewer triangles (#4903).
• Order-independent transparency: see-through surfaces are no longer sorted triangle by triangle as the view turns. 25 see-through copies of a 2-million-triangle part went from about 10 s a frame to 2.8 ms with instancing and level of detail (#4903).
• Picking uses each body's own search tree instead of a GPU pick buffer (#4666).
• Meshes: imported meshes share their triangles between document copies (#4675), and a large mesh's shared vertices are welded quicker, before its first frame (#4680).
• Frustum culling: placements of an instanced mesh that are out of view aren't drawn (#4647).

…

Designs saved in 0.19.0 use format 30 and don't open in 0.18.4 or older.

Why 0.19.0: a minor release for the reworked workspace: a Compact layout, shared panel containers, and a redesigned Assistant and History. It also includes the fixes that landed since 0.18.4.

New interface

• Compact layout: Preferences › General offers Floating or Compact. Compact joins the workspace panels with single borders, and folded Browser and History stacks give the room back to the view (#4533).
• Show text under ribbon icons: turn it off for a ribbon 24 points shorter, in either layout. Tooltips and command menus stay (#4533).
• Assistant is redesigned: grouped tool results with expandable failures, approval cards, setup guidance and a composer pinned to the bottom. It fills the height of the view on either side (#4533).
• History is a resizable panel with beginning, back, forward and end controls. Dock it at the bottom, full height on the left, or under the Browser (#3953).
• Shared containers: panels, windows, confirmations and menus are built from one container, so they look and behave alike (#4533).

Themes

…

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).

What's new in SolidCraft 0.19.0-nightly.20261022.67.1 is listed below, and the

ROADMAP lists

the known limitations. Designs from every earlier version open in this one.

Upgrading from 0.7 or earlier. 0.8 changed the Linux app ID to ai.storyteller.solidcraft:

flatpak update offers to replace the old app, and the .deb, .rpm and AppImage remove the old

menu entry.

Upgrading from 0.5 or earlier. 0.6 renamed SolveCraft to SolidCraft and made the zip

container the default save format. .solvecraft designs, old settings folders and

SOLVECRAFT_* variables are still picked up, and solvecraft-cli still forwards to

solidcraft-cli. Want plain JSON? Use File ▸ Save As JSON… or --save design.json. On

macOS, replace SolveCraft.app with SolidCraft.app. Details:

compatibility notes.

Documentation, the browser app and the Flatpak feed use the SolidCraft project Pages URLs.

Which file?

• Windows: SolidCraft-0.19.0-nightly.20261022.67.1-windows-x64.exe runs as is. Or install the .msi, or unzip the

-portable.zip (x64, x86 and arm64).

• macOS 11+ (Apple silicon and Intel): open the .dmg and drag SolidCraft.app onto Applications.

…

Why 0.18.4: a patch release for a faster start, especially on Windows, and a more direct camera, on top of 0.18.3.

Faster start

• Fonts: the first window no longer waits for the system CJK, Hangul and Thai fonts; they're found in the background and added as soon as they're there (#4283).
• Start page: sample pictures and the check for recent files run in the background, so nothing on it waits on files or pictures (#4349).
• Windows: SolidCraft comes to the front when its window first appears (#4284), and a restored window keeps its title bar within the screen's work area (#4299).

Changed

• Camera: view changes apply at once instead of animating: the view cube, axis triad, Look At (including entering and leaving a sketch), Fit, Home, named views and arrow keys. Orbiting no longer lags behind the mouse after a view-cube click (#4296).
• Sketch tools (Rectangle, Circle, Arc, Slot, Polygon, Line, Spline) come back in the mode you used last, across designs and restarts, and their shortcuts start that mode too (#4308).

…

Designs saved in 0.18.3 use format 29 and don't open in 0.18.2 or older.

Why 0.18.3: a patch release of compatible fixes and small additions on top of 0.18.2.

New

• Align takes the origin planes, construction and sketch planes, and the origin point, and stays parametric (#4248).
• Threads: a modelled thread on a shaft thicker than the thread turns the shaft down to the major diameter instead of refusing, so an M6 on an 8 mm shaft works (#4256).
• View: held arrow keys turn the view smoothly (#4090).
• Large STEP assemblies keep their display plans and reopen from the model cache instead of converting the STEP again (#4021).
• Agents: commands sent over the control channel can compute off the window thread, so the window stays live (opt-in) (#3340); control.running lists what the app is running across connections (#3689).

Fixed

• Face names: pieces of a split face keep their numbers from one evaluation to the next; older designs keep their numbering (#3991).
• Speed: sketching on a face no longer meshes the body twice, about 1 s faster per feature after a split (#3981).

…

Why 0.18.2: a patch release that puts back what the new ribbon interface in 0.18.0 lost, with import, modeling and sketch fixes that were ready alongside. Thanks to everyone who reported them.

Fixes for the new interface

• Parameters and Configurations are on the Model, Sheet Metal and Sketch tabs again, as well as Manage; Parameters opens without switching tabs (#3937).
• Sheet Metal is a tab in every document again, with New Sketch first and Convert to Sheet Metal in the Create menu (#3937, #3946). The Surface tab leads with New Sketch too (#3964).
• Finish Sketch is back at the bottom of the sketch palette as a full-width button (#3937), and on the Sketch tab it sits right after the last sketch panel instead of alone at the far right (#3958).
• Browser: long names end in "…" inside the card, with the full name in the tooltip (#3940).
• Solve Sketch no longer shows up in command search: sketches solve themselves after every edit (#3940).

Sketching

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