Aircad launches browser-based CAD with DWG support, an AI agent and JavaScript scripting

A CAD workstation in the browser

Aircad, a new application that brings professional 2D drafting and 3D solid modeling into the browser, was introduced on Hacker News on November 11 in a Show HN post. According to the company's site, there is nothing to install: the app runs in a browser tab, always on the newest version, and it can open existing DWG files together with their layouts, blocks and dimensions.

Drafting and modeling in one app

Aircad pairs a 2D drafting environment with NURBS-based solid modeling, including booleans, fillets, shells, lofts and sweeps, plus push/pull editing where you select a face and displace it by a precise distance. The drafting side covers the conventional toolset — trimming, splitting, extending and stretching geometry, along with arcs, hatching, blocks and layers — driven by a command line with object snaps that accepts the shortcuts CAD users already rely on. The product ships with libraries of doors, windows, furniture and plumbing components in both Imperial and Metric units, and teams can pool their own blocks in a shared collection.

For annotated drawing sets, the site lists dimension types ranging from linear and angular to ordinate and arc length, GD&T feature control frames, leaders, styled text, tables and title blocks, arranged on viewports at any scale, with a print preview that is meant to match the resulting PDF.

Files in, files out

Interoperability is positioned as a headline feature. Aircad imports DWG and DXF while preserving layouts, blocks and dimensions, and also reads Rhino .3dm files, STEP solids, glTF scenes and SVG artwork. Drawings can be exported back out as DWG, DXF or PDF, and models as STL or OBJ meshes.

An optional AI agent

The built-in AI agent accepts plain-language questions and edit requests and works directly on the drawing. In the company's demo, asked whether a stair meets building code, the agent checks it against the IRC, finds that 14 risers at 8 inches each exceed the 7¾-inch maximum for a 9-foot-4-inch floor-to-floor height, calculates that 15 risers at 7.47 inches would comply, and then drafts the fix — adding the extra riser, extending the guard and handrail, and updating the dimension — when instructed to, presenting the result for the user to apply or discard.

Users can choose which underlying model powers the agent, with Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek and GLM listed among the options, and conversation threads are saved with the file and kept private. The company stresses that the feature is entirely optional and that everything in Aircad works without it.

Multiplayer editing and version history

Collaboration is handled through shared links: multiple people can edit the same file simultaneously, with control over who can edit and who can only view, and comments are pinned to the geometry they refer to rather than buried in email. Redlines and marked-up PDFs are included rather than sold as a separate review product.

Every edit is recorded with its author and timestamp in a per-file activity feed, and files keep unlimited version history. Any two versions can be compared visually, with additions, changes and deletions tinted directly in the drawing, and users can fork from any point in the history to experiment or restore earlier work.

Scale and scripting

On performance, the site claims support for more than 250,000 entities in a single file and shows a model of 108 floors containing 38,510 editable solids. Heavy operations such as booleans, fillets, lofts and sweeps reportedly run in the background so the drawing stays responsive, with Esc available to cancel, and view or style switches happen without reloading the model.

Aircad also exposes a scripting layer: commands can be written in JavaScript against the same API the built-in tools use, complete with snap-aware inputs, live previews and a single undo step. Scripts live inside the file or can be shared with a team, and the AI agent can write them too.

Why it matters

Professional CAD has remained one of the most install-bound corners of engineering and architecture software, with the DWG format in particular anchoring many firms to desktop tooling. A browser application that opens DWG faithfully and exports it back lowers the cost of trying an alternative, while built-in versioning and multiplayer editing replace the emailed-copies workflow that still plagues drawing review. The AI agent's apply-or-discard pattern is also a notable model for generative tools touching engineering documents, keeping a human approval step in the loop. The performance figures are the vendor's own and will need independent testing, but the launch is a strong signal that the browser is becoming a credible host for heavyweight professional design software.