If you design a part that has to be manufactured — a bracket, an enclosure, an adapter — SolidCraft is the one that can finish the job today. If you draft 2D drawings against AutoCAD conventions, or you need DWG in and out, CADCraft is the only one of the two that addresses it, and it is pre-alpha.
They solve different problems
CADCraft is measured against AutoCAD 2027: a drafting environment. Command line, osnaps, layers, DIMSTYLE variables, paper space, plotting. Its roadmap scores 2D drafting far higher than 3D, and lists 3D modelling at 2%.
SolidCraft is a parametric solid modeller in the Fusion 360 tradition: sketch, constrain, extrude, fillet, shell, pattern, edit a parameter and watch the model rebuild. It does not claim to replace AutoCAD and never uses the phrase.
So the honest framing is not "which is better" but "which job do you have". A drafter and a mechanical designer will read the same two repositories and correctly choose different ones.
Side by side
| SolidCraft | CADCraft | |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation | tangency-labs | storytold (ArtCraft family) |
| Job | Parametric solid modelling | 2D drafting |
| Version / stage | v0.15 — "early but usable for simple parts" | pre-alpha |
| Self-assessment | No percentage; a test suite instead | ≈38% ready for real work |
| Evidence published | 75 of 76 reference parts match analytic volume, area, centre of mass, bounding box | Per-dimension parity table: features 41%, file formats 30%, stability 35% |
| Geometry exchange | STEP, IGES, STL in and out; DXF export of current view | DXF read R12–2018, write R2000; DWG read (acadrust), write R2000 |
| The save caveat | Mesh imports can't drive solid features | Entities it doesn't model are not kept on save |
| Agent access | MCP server | MCP server, JSON control channel, CLI |
| Installers | Not code-signed yet | Code-signed |
| Web app | Yes | Yes |
| Hours to done | Not stated as a total | ~1,150–1,850 agent-hours to 95% |
Two philosophies of proof
This is the most useful contrast on this site. CADCraft measures scope: 245 of 491 AutoCAD menu items have a live command behind them, and it tells you so, per dimension, with hour estimates. SolidCraft measures correctness: it rebuilds 76 reference parts and compares computed geometry against analytic values or FreeCAD.
Both are more honest than a press release, and neither is complete. Scope without correctness means commands that exist and produce wrong solids. Correctness without scope means a kernel that is exactly right about a part you cannot model yet. A mature product needs both ledgers, and neither project has both.
The practical trap
CADCraft's README says the sentences that should govern your file behaviour: entities it has not modelled yet "are not kept on save". That applies to DWG and DXF paths, both of which it writes at R2000.
SolidCraft's caveat is gentler but equally real: a mesh import cannot be used directly as a solid feature base, so a downloaded STL is a reference object, not a starting point.
In both cases the safe habit is the same: keep the original file, export a copy, and never treat an alpha's save as authoritative.
Who should pick which
- Designing a printable enclosure and want it to work tonight → SolidCraft.
- Drafting 2D plans on Linux and need AutoCAD habits → CADCraft, with the file-loss caveat foremost.
- Needing DWG files to move between applications → CADCraft is the only option here, and you should verify every round trip by hand.
- Wanting an agent to build geometry → both qualify; SolidCraft has the more impressive public demonstration, with a 3,323-step rover built entirely through its MCP server.
Frequently asked
Is SolidCraft made by the same team as CADCraft?
Unconfirmed, and the repositories never reference each other. They share a stack — Rust, egui, MCP, the ai.storyteller application-id namespace — but SolidCraft is tangency-labs at solidcraft.io, while CADCraft is storytold and part of the ArtCraft family. Treat them as unrelated until a source says otherwise.
Can SolidCraft open DWG files?
Not documented. Its stated exchange formats are STEP, IGES and STL, plus DXF export of the current view only. CADCraft is the one with DWG read.
Which is further along?
By published evidence, SolidCraft: a 75/76 verification result at version 0.15. CADCraft's own number is ≈38% ready, which reflects a far larger scope rather than a similar project being behind.
Sources: SolidCraft repository, CADCraft repository (README, ROADMAP.md, docs/oracle.md), read 18 October 2026.