Your first drawing in OpenDraft

1. Draw a line

OpenDraft is built around a command line. Click on it, type a command’s short name and press Enter (or the space bar). It then prompts you step by step, and you can click points or type coordinates.

Command line

Command: L
Specify first point: 0,0
Specify next point or [Undo]: @100<30
Specify next point or [Undo]: <press Enter to finish>

@100<30 means 100 units long at 30 degrees, from the last point.
C draws a circle, REC a rectangle, PL a polyline, A an arc.

2. Change what you drew

Modify commands work the same way: start the command, pick objects, answer the prompts.

M moves, CO copies, RO rotates, MI mirrors, SC scales.
O offsets a line or curve by a distance. TR trims and EX extends to other objects.
F fillets a corner and CHA chamfers it.

OpenDraft offsetting the bracket outline inward by 3 units, picking the edge and the side with the mouse. — Offset: type O and a distance, then click the edge and the side to offset towards.

3. Draw precisely

F8 toggles ortho, which keeps lines horizontal or vertical.
F3 toggles object snaps, which snap to endpoints, midpoints, centres, intersections and more.
Typed coordinates always work, so you can draw exact geometry without any snaps.

4. Undo freely

Every change you make is one undo step, grouped per command, so Ctrl+Z (or U) takes back exactly one command. A command that fails part-way does not leave half its changes behind.

5. Save safely

OpenDraft saves atomically and keeps autosave and crash-recovery copies. Its native .odx format is still in development and can change between releases, so also save a DXF copy of anything you care about: File > Save As, then choose DXF. Any version of OpenDraft, and other CAD programs, can read it.

6. Plot or print

Press Ctrl+P. Choose the paper, scale and area, check the preview, then send it to a PDF, an SVG or a printer. Plotting to a file works at 1:1 in millimetres. Printing to paper is new in 0.2.0, so tell us how it goes with your printer.