Draftwork
Draftwork's icon: a white set square with an amber line drawn from its corner

2D drafting the way you already work

Draftwork is a 2D CAD app with an AutoCAD-style command line. Type LINE, TRIM or DIMLINEAR, answer the prompts, and keep your drawings in DWG and DXF. Free, for macOS and Windows.

Download for macOSApple silicon Download for Windows64-bit Windows 10 and 11

Version 0.4.0 · Free · No account

Draftwork with House.dwg open: a floor plan and two elevations on a sheet, the ribbon above, the Properties and Layers panels on the right and the command line below

What it does

The 2D side of a full CAD program: drawing, editing, annotation, layers and blocks, layouts and plotting. Commands, aliases and system variables have the names AutoCAD users know.

Draw

  • LINE, PLINE, CIRCLE, ARC, ELLIPSE, SPLINE, RECTANG, POLYGON
  • Multilines with styles (MLINE, MLSTYLE)
  • Hatches with patterns and gradients, associative to their boundaries

Edit

  • MOVE, COPY, ROTATE, MIRROR, SCALE, STRETCH
  • TRIM, EXTEND, FILLET, OFFSET, ARRAY, including associative arrays
  • Grips, undo and redo

Draw precisely

  • Object snaps and object snap tracking, ortho and polar
  • Typed coordinates: absolute, relative and polar
  • UCS, PLAN and turned views, isometric drafting

Annotate

  • Dimensions, associative, jogged and oblique ones too, and QDIM
  • Text and MTEXT with columns and fields, AutoCAD SHX fonts, and a spell check
  • Leaders and multileaders, geometric tolerance frames
  • Tables with formulas, annotative scales

Organise

  • Layers with layer states and per-viewport overrides
  • Blocks with attributes, a block editor, and a Blocks palette with auto-placement
  • Groups, external references and raster images

Plot and publish

  • Layouts with viewports at a scale, page setups
  • Plot to PDF, and PUBLISH many layouts into one multi-sheet PDF

Your files, as they are

DWG and DXF are read and written by Draftwork's own code, written from scratch. No converter, no other program needed.

Help built in

A searchable guide (F1) with every command, its prompts and options, the system variables and the shortcuts, also on this site. Light and dark themes.

A tour

Screenshots of Draftwork 0.1.0 on macOS, with real drawings.

1

Pick, and change it

Click an object and its grips appear; drag one to stretch it. The Properties panel shows what's selected, its layer, colour, linetype and geometry, and changes it as you type. Layers are on the right, with their on, freeze, lock and plot switches.

A wall line of the floor plan selected, with blue grips at its ends and middle, and its start and end points in the Properties panel
2

Annotation as it was drawn

A drawing made in AutoCAD, opened as it is: aligned dimensions, hatch patterns for the concrete and the gravel, multileaders and text.

A section of a concrete slope protection: red aligned dimensions of 60, 200 and 849, a gravel filter drain hatched with stones, and leaders to the notes FILTER DRAIN and 10MM BARS SPACED 30CM O.C. B.W.
3

Layouts and viewports

A sheet with four viewports made with MVIEW: the whole drawing above, the floor plan and both elevations at a larger scale below. Each viewport has its own view, scale and layer overrides. Plot the layout to PDF, or PUBLISH several into one file.

A layout tab with a sheet of paper holding four viewports: the whole sheet of the house at the top, and the floor plan, front elevation and right-side elevation below it
4

Dimension styles

The Dimension Style Manager has the tabs you know: lines, symbols and arrows, text, fit, primary and alternate units, tolerances. The preview follows every change.

The Modify Dimension Style dialog on its Lines tab, with a preview of linear, angular, radius dimensions
5

Light or dark

Draftwork follows your system's appearance, or the one you choose. The drawing area stays dark by default in both.

The same house drawing with Draftwork in its dark theme
6

The guide is in the app

Press F1 and search: every command with its prompt and options, every system variable, the shortcuts, and a page for getting started. From a command's page, one click runs it in your drawing. The guide is on this site too.

Draftwork Help searched for hatch: the list of matching commands and system variables, and the page for the HATCH command with its prompt and options

DWG and DXF

Open a drawing from AutoCAD or another CAD program, work on it, and save it back in the version the people you work with use.

FormatVersionsOpenSave
DWGAutoCAD drawingAutoCAD 2000, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013 and 2018 formatsAC1015 to AC1032, the format of every AutoCAD release from 2000 on. Saving offers every one but 2007 (AC1021); a 2007 drawing can be saved as 2010 or 2004.YesYes
DXFDrawing Exchange FormatR12 and 2000 to 2018AC1009 and AC1015 to AC1032YesYes
PDFPlots and multi-sheet sets—Yes
PNG, JPEGRaster images attached to a drawingAttach—

Draftwork's readers and writers are its own, written from scratch from the published descriptions of the formats. When a file holds something Draftwork can't show, it tells you: the drawing opens with a list of notes, and a click on one selects the objects it's about.

What it doesn't do (yet)

Better to know before you download.

  • It's 2D only: no 3D modelling, solids or rendering.
  • No GIS or coordinate systems: drawings are plain Cartesian space.
  • No parametric constraints (geometric or dimensional).
  • No dynamic block parameters or actions: blocks insert as they were drawn.
  • No PDF underlays: PDFs can be made, not attached.
  • No macOS on Intel, and no Linux, for now.

This is the first version. If something you need is missing, or a file doesn't open as it should, say so through syncster.dev.

Download

Draftwork is free. There's no account and no sign-in.

On Windows you'll see a warning. Draftwork for Windows isn't code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen says it is from an unknown publisher the first time you run it. Click More info, then Run anyway. Check the download against its SHA-256 below if you want to be sure it's ours.

On macOS, Draftwork is signed and notarized by Apple: open the installer and follow its steps, and Draftwork goes in your Applications folder. The disk image works too: open it and drag Draftwork to Applications.

macOS

  • macOS 11 Big Sur or later
  • A Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later)
  • A signed and notarized installer (.pkg), or a disk image (.dmg)

Windows

  • 64-bit Windows 10 or 11
  • An installer that puts Draftwork in your Start menu, with an uninstaller (no administrator rights needed); or a .zip with a single Draftwork.exe