Main UppCAD features

UppCAD is a 2d/3d CAD application created after years of experience using other CAD programs.
The main difference against other specialized CAD programs which are optimized to work in 2d OR in 3d, with UppCAD we wanted to create an universal CAD which is able to handle efficiently both, as few other CADs, as AutoCAD, can do.
The program usage is inspired on AutoCAD, to allow an easy migration for people that is used to it.

As the application is in rapid development stage, we'll show here just a short and limited set of capabilities; to see them in detail we suggest you to visit the tutorial and documentation pages.

2d drawings

UppCAD has a complete set of 2d drawing primitivs, and all the needed tools to handle them.

2d primitives:

  • Construction lines (XLine and Ray)
  • Lines
  • Circles
  • Arcs
  • Ellipsis
  • Elliptical, hyperbolic and parabolic arcs
  • Polylines made of all above elements
  • Points
  • Texts
  • Blocks of above elements
  • Dimensions (work in progress)

Operations on 2d primitives :

  • Move
  • Copy
  • Extension
  • Trim
  • Scale
  • Mirror
  • Erase
  • Dragging of extremities by grips

3d drawings

UppCAD brings many 3d primitives and tools to handle them.
3d modeling is based on OpenCascade libraries, a complete set of geometric and b-rep modeling tools.

Elements:

  • Box
  • Cylinder
  • Cone
  • Sphere
  • Thorus
  • Extrusions
  • Lofts
  • Sweeps

Operations on elements:

Besides most of operations allowed for 2d elements, UppCAD has following capabilities on 3d elements:

  • Cut
  • Union
  • Subtraction
  • Intersection
  • Interference
  • Section
  • Face offsets

Layers, materials and transparency

UppCAD, as AutoCAD, allows grouping of elements by layers, each of them having a predefined set of parameters, like color, line type, transparency and material.
Objects on layers must not keep layers properties, even if this should be the right way to handle them. Thet can have own properties, which take precedence.
So, we can have a layer named DIM, with yello color, no transparency nor applied material, and an object on it with red color, 30% transparency and "wood" material. This object will still belong to DIM layer, and will be hidden when layer is turned off.
Layers can be seen as many superposed sheets; each of them can be indivitually turned off, on order to limit object's visibility.
It's also possible to lock layers, making it impossible to modify objects on them.

With materials (which you can create and/or modify from predefined ones) you can have very realistic visualizations of objects.

Import / Export from other CAD formats

UppCAD uses an open XML format for its drawings; solids are stored in OpenCascade BRep format compressed by zip, so it's easy to process them by external applications.
It can also import and export other cad formats; the import/export capabilities are growing rapidly.

Import

  • STEP (.stp, .step); 3d interchange format
  • IGES (.igs, .iges); 3d interchange format
  • SAT (in development); objects created by ACIS kernel, used by AutoCAD
  • DXF (in development); format used by AutoCAD
  • STL (in development); allow loading of 3d printer files and convert them to UppCAD solids

Export

  • STEP
  • IGES
  • DXF (2d only, in development)
  • STL (format used in 3d printers)