µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

You should remove any reference to LEGO from the website and the examples. LEGO is extremely protective of its brand (similar to / worse than Nintendo) and does not want third parties using its name, because it is concerned that LEGO could become a generic term which could put its trademark at risk.

See: "Lego sues Dutch firm over anti-terror blocks using name and shape" https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/lego-sues-dutc... ( http://archive.today/q5XrX )

There is zero reason for you to have a cookie banner taking up a third of the page.

At this point, everyone making websites should be well aware that there is no requirement for cookie banners and that implementing such is active disrespect towards your users. Your cookie banner does not tell me you care about my privacy, it tells me you're trying to collect some type of data about me and want to annoy me into letting you sell that data.

A cookie banner is exactly as much a red flag as an obviously AI generated hero image at the top of your page. Disrespectful.

I've been using zoo and its KCL language with some success for boundary-representation CAD writing. If I understood correctly, µcad serves the same purpose. Comparing code samples between both of them, I personally enjoy KCL's pipelined approach more.

My main beef with zoo is the fact that they are promoting vendor lock-in by forcing users to use their cloud-hosted geometry kernel with absolutely no local alternative. It's not clear to me how µcad solves this problem.

[1] Lego brick in KCL: https://zoo.dev/docs/kcl-samples/lego

[2] Lego brick in µcad: https://microcad.xyz/index.php/2025/11/12/lego-bricks/

[3] Gear in KCL: https://zoo.dev/docs/kcl-samples/spur-gear

[4] Gear in µcad: https://microcad.xyz/index.php/2025/11/12/gears/

One of the best things about openscad is the ability to immediately see the results of a code change in the 3D view (all I do is save the file with :w in neovim and openscad re-renders it). Being able to interact like this makes it much quicker and easier to iterate on a design.

I read through the ucad website and book for 10 minutes and haven't been able to figure out if there is an analogue to this for ucad?

There are several things that look neat about ucad's language, but I would need to recreate something like openscad's workflow to consider switching.

Please provide a trivial example of the code and the generated sketch front and center on your front page.

Tried openscad and then cadquery for some geometry iteration projects and found them clunky. It wasn't just that I was missing a UI; the functions, constraints and geometry kernel weren't as powerful as onshape, which I've used a bit, and presumably light years behind fusion 360, which I haven't used.

Even freecad, a UI-based oss cad, is not quite ergonomic for a beginner-to-intermediate user, though it has come a long way in the past few years.

I'm excited for there to eventually be a good open source cad option, whether language-only or language-plus-GUI, but am also increasingly on team 'tools matter for your productivity'.

This does not seem to have a constraint solver or any documented plans to integrate one. I love math, but I don’t enjoy maintaining walls of trig to make trivial constraints parametric.

Many many years ago I created my own JS -> OpenScad generator, so I defo agree the OpenScad language could be better. Though the engine worked well.

Putting it here in case anyone is curious: https://github.com/tasn/scadjs

Looking at examples I see:

``` c = Sector(radius, start = 180°, end = 270°).translate(y = radius); ```

Programming language that requires (maybe it does not require, but then example is not good) to type degrees. Or maybe it is not designed to be typed and rather ai generated?

No Web notebook for https://docs.microcad.xyz/tutorials/book/lego_brick/ no install?

(as https://machineblocks.com/docs/scad-crash-course-101 does)

Super fascinating project. I'm very interested in this. I truly hate using the tools by hand and as a programmer, this feels waaaay more intuitive. That said, when reviewing the gear video, I think understanding to start with the gear primitive would require giving the libraries a good once over as I wouldn't have assumed those existed.

Can imagine more and more forms being built in as the community goes.

kudos!

I've been searching for a CAD language that supports iteration in a good way. I've been designing a self-build house and it occurs to me that, once I have the walls etc, filling in the details for the manufacture of those walls could be done by a programming routine. Such a routine could work out how many studs are needed and their placement etc and generate the kind of cut-throughs where you can see the construction inside the wall that you sometimes see in construction books. Anyway, without for-loops that kind of thing is really difficult and I've given up.

So.. OpenSCAD, but with strong types and rust-flavored syntax?

So this is more an autocad equivalent? Does it have interfaces to enable reusability in some other file format (e.g. any way to get it into generic models eventually importable into revit?)

Can it do fillets?

Interesting project, I will look into it.

This site sucks. Why does it use php, and why is every link a query? Just make it a static page.

Why not openscad

This almost feels like going back to old school Autocad.

So what is the big advantage of this over OpenSCAD?

Could you please make the book into a PDF?

Nice with another alternative. I have been using shapescript, which I think is easier than openscad, and available on ios. https://shapescript.info/

It makes LLMs stronger because code is something LLMs are good at.

This is a neat idea and I quite like some of the syntax, but what is this for? I have a hard time seeing this gaining traction over traditional sketch-based CAD for a number of reasons, so is it just meant to be a toy?

Looks like a promising alternative to OpenSCAD.

Although am I the only one to notice the swastika in their logo?