Hy-CAD

Hy-CAD is a hybrid-architecture 2D CAD solution built with Rust. The system employs a modular Cargo workspace architecture with WGPU-based rendering, enabling high-performance 2D CAD operations.

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Inspiration Why should viewing a CAD drawing require installing gigabytes of proprietary software? Engineers in the field, architects on-site, and collaborators across continents all face this barrier. We envisioned opening a DXF file as effortlessly as viewing a photograph—professional CAD rendering in your browser, instantly accessible, universally compatible.

What It Does Hy-CAD is a cloud-first CAD system delivering AutoCAD-grade rendering directly in web browsers. It handles complex drawings with 100,000+ entities, renders via WebGPU acceleration, and matches native desktop performance.

Key capabilities: Instant DXF viewing (up to 50MB, zero installation) · GPU-accelerated pan/zoom · Full entity support (lines, arcs, splines, hatches, dimensions, text) · Complete layer management · Cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, any modern browser)

How We Built It We chose Rust for its dual compilation to native binaries and WebAssembly with near-zero overhead. The rendering pipeline uses wgpu, abstracting WebGPU, Vulkan, Metal, and DirectX.

Architecture: hycad-core-types (foundation) → hycad-parser (DXF streaming) + hycad-core (GPU engine) → hycad-app-cloud (WASM app)

Optimizations: R-tree spatial indexing for (O(\log n)) queries · Geometry batching minimizing draw calls · Progressive streaming for large files · Tessellation caching

Challenges We Faced Font Rendering: CAD fonts (SHX, TTF variants) aren't browser-compatible. We built a font mapper translating CAD references to web-safe equivalents while preserving metrics.

Precision at Scale: Engineering coordinates span micrometers to kilometers. Float32 precision (\epsilon \approx 1.19 \times 10^{-7}) causes artifacts. Our large-coordinate system dynamically re-centers the view origin, maintaining sub-pixel accuracy.

WebGPU Compatibility: As an emerging standard, WebGPU varies across browsers. Our abstraction layer gracefully falls back to WebGL2 when needed.

What We Learned The browser is no longer a limitation—it's liberation. WebAssembly runs at 95% native speed. Progressive enhancement ensures every user gets a functional experience regardless of hardware.

What's Next Real-time collaboration with CRDT-based conflict resolution. AI-assisted drafting for intelligent completions and error detection. Hy-CAD isn't just a viewer—it's the foundation for accessible, collaborative CAD.

Built with Rust · wgpu · WebAssembly · egui

Built With

  • axum
  • egui
  • rust
  • wasm
  • wgpu
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Updates

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High-Level Architecture

graph TB
    subgraph "Hy-CAD Workspace"
        subgraph "Applications"
            CloudApp[hycad-app-cloud<br/>WebAssembly]
            DesktopApp[hycad-app-desktop<br/>Native Binary]
        end

        subgraph "Core Libraries"
            CoreTypes[hycad-core-types<br/>Data Structures]
            Renderer[hycad-core<br/>WGPU Renderer]
            UI[hycad-ui-egui<br/>UI Components]
            Parser[hycad-parser<br/>DXF/DWG Parser]
            Commands[hycad-commands<br/>CAD Operations]
        end

        subgraph "Plugin System"
            PluginAPI[hycad-plugin-api<br/>Plugin Interface]
            Designer[hycad-plugin-designer<br/>Parametric Design]
        end
    end

    CloudApp --> Renderer
    CloudApp --> UI
    DesktopApp --> Renderer
    DesktopApp --> UI
    DesktopApp --> PluginAPI

    Renderer --> CoreTypes
    UI --> CoreTypes
    Parser --> CoreTypes
    Commands --> CoreTypes

    PluginAPI --> CoreTypes
    Designer --> PluginAPI

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posted an update —

Hy-CAD is a hybrid-architecture 2D CAD solution built with Rust, featuring both cloud-based and desktop applications. The system employs a modular Cargo workspace architecture with WGPU-based rendering, enabling high-performance 2D CAD operations across platforms.

Current Focus: 2D CAD with world-class geometry processing and rendering Future Vision: Extensible architecture ready for BIM (Building Information Modeling) integration

The design prioritizes:

  1. Cloud-first 2D CAD: WebAssembly-based web application with desktop parity
  2. High-precision 2D geometry: Exceeding AutoCAD standards for 2D drafting
  3. BIM-ready architecture: Modular design allowing future 3D/BIM extensions

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