text-to-cad

text-to-cad is a library of agent skills for generating, inspecting, sourcing, slicing, and handing off CAD and robot-description artifacts from local project files.

🧰 Skills

Install the library to give agents focused workflows for CAD, fabrication, robot description files, simulation, and local review.

Skill	Summary	Source
CAD	Creates and edits CAD models from plain-language or image requests, with STEP as the main output along with options to export to STL, 3MF and GLB.	skills/cad
step.parts	Finds off-the-shelf STEP parts like screws, bearings, motors, and connectors.	skills/step-parts
Engineering Drawing	Dimensioned engineering drawings from a part, as a PDF: views, hidden lines, dimensions, hole callouts, title block.	skills/engineering-drawing
DXF	Creates 2D DXF drawings like profiles, templates, gaskets, and cut layouts from Python sources or CAD geometry.	skills/dxf
URDF	Writes robot structure files with links, joints, limits, inertials, and meshes.	skills/urdf
SRDF	Adds MoveIt planning groups, end effectors, poses, and collision rules to a URDF.	skills/srdf
SDF	Creates simulator models and worlds with frames, physics, sensors, and lights.	skills/sdf
SendCutSend	Checks DXF and STEP files before upload to SendCutSend.	skills/sendcutsend
DfAM Check	Measures mesh printability per process: wall thickness, overhangs, support volume, and build orientation.	skills/dfam-check
DFM	Reviews a part for sheet metal, CNC machining, or injection molding, with measured evidence and the cited rule behind every finding; measures draft, undercuts and projected area from a mesh.	skills/dfm
G-code	Slices models into printer-ready G-code with OrcaSlicer, using your own printer presets.	skills/gcode
Bambu Labs	Sends prints to Bambu Lab printers through Bambu Connect, Bambu Lab's official app, or Bambu Studio.	skills/bambu-labs

💻 Installation

Install or clone from main: it is the source tree, and every skill's requirements.txt pins the cadgen release it was published with. (models/, the fixture corpus, is not needed to use the skills.)

Skills

Install text-to-cad with the Skills CLI:

npx skills add earthtojake/text-to-cad

This is the preferred installation path. It installs the individual skills directly for supported agents.

Use the same command to update. add re-fetches the package and overwrites what is already installed, so it both refreshes existing skills and installs any skill added in a newer release. npx skills update only refreshes skills already in your lockfile, so it silently misses new ones — which matters here, because releases do add skills.

Neither command removes a skill that was retired upstream; drop one with npx skills remove <skill> if you need to. The retired cad-viewer skill is now covered by the CAD, DXF and robot-description skills; remove old standalone installs with npx skills remove cad-viewer. For local development symlinks, remove the old cad-viewer link manually: the install/uninstall scripts discover only skills still present in the checkout.

(npx skills install … still works — it is an undocumented alias for add.)

Plugins

Provider-native plugin installs are also available for Codex, Claude Code, Cursor and Grok Build. Each installs from main, whose root carries every host's manifest. The plugin branch is the same plugin without the rest of the repository, updated on each release; the plugin directories follow it.

# Codex (requires Codex 0.142.0 or newer)
codex plugin marketplace add earthtojake/text-to-cad
codex plugin add text-to-cad@earthtojake

Codex resolves this repository-root plugin only from 0.142.0 onward. On older versions the plugin is skipped silently and never appears in codex plugin list; upgrade with npm install -g @openai/codex@latest.

In the Codex app the plugin also brings the CAD viewer: CAD in the sidebar (recent models, and Open), a CAD tab beside each thread that the agent drives, and Open with CAD for model files. It runs locally through uv, which must be installed: after installing the plugin, restart the app, and its first start downloads the pinned runtime. The plugin's $cad-mcp-setup skill checks for uv and points you to its installer. To update, upgrade the earthtojake marketplace (Plugins › Manage › Marketplace, or codex plugin marketplace upgrade earthtojake) and restart the app: its first start downloads the new runtime. The marketplace was renamed from text-to-cad to earthtojake; if you added it before, remove the old one first (codex plugin marketplace remove text-to-cad).

# Claude Code
claude plugin marketplace add earthtojake/text-to-cad
claude plugin install text-to-cad@earthtojake

In Claude Code, the plugin also starts CAD's server. Where Claude Code can show app views, CAD shows models as viewer cards in the conversation; otherwise, as in a terminal, asking it to show a model gives you a link that opens the model in the CAD Viewer in your browser.

In Claude Desktop, CAD shows models in the chat: ask Claude to show one and it appears as a viewer card you can orbit, add to your prompt, and open full size; Claude can read what you selected and see what you see. It runs locally through uv: add the server to Claude Desktop's config (Settings > Developer > Edit Config), then restart the app. If Claude Desktop cannot find uvx, give its full path (which uvx). The config pins a cadgen release, and uvx keeps the version it first downloads: to update, change it to the latest release and restart the app.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "cad": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["--no-config", "--from", "cadgen==0.7.11", "cadgen", "mcp"] }
  }
}

# Cursor
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/earthtojake/text-to-cad ~/.cursor/plugins/local/text-to-cad

Cursor reads .cursor-plugin/plugin.json: restart Cursor after cloning, and git pull in that folder to update. Add --branch plugin to clone only the plugin. Teams can instead import the repository under Dashboard → Plugins & MCPs → Team Marketplaces. Like the other plugins it starts CAD's server, which runs locally through uv.

Grok Build reads the Claude plugin manifest; there is no separate Grok plugin manifest. Append @plugin to the source to install only the plugin.

# Grok Build
grok plugin install earthtojake/text-to-cad --trust
grok plugin enable text-to-cad

Restart your agent if newly installed skills do not appear. For local development, branch from main, open PRs against main, and follow CONTRIBUTING.md.

Usage analytics

The CAD app (the plugin's cad server) and the browser viewer (cadgen viewer) can send anonymous usage counts: a random install ID, versions, your OS and agent app, how often each CAD tool was called and views were used, and a one-way code and the format of each distinct file shown (to count files, not identify them). Our server also counts installs per country, from each request's IP address, as weekly and monthly totals only. Never file names, paths, contents or prompts. It is off until you allow it in either app's one-time prompt (one answer counts for both); change it later with Share anonymous usage data in either app's Settings, uvx cadgen analytics on|off, or by asking your agent to turn it off. DO_NOT_TRACK=1 keeps it off. See the privacy policy.

Windows 11: Smart App Control

The CAD kernel behind the cad, dxf, urdf, srdf and sdf skills is OCP, OpenCascade's Python binding, and its wheel ships an unsigned native module. Windows 11's Smart App Control blocks unsigned native code, so on a machine where it is on (the default on a fresh install) every cadgen command and import build123d fails with ImportError: DLL load failed while importing OCP, and Event Viewer records the refusal as Event ID 3077 under CodeIntegrity › Operational. cadgen doctor names this when it sees it.

Smart App Control has no per-app exception. Either turn it off (Settings › Privacy & security › Windows Security › App & browser control › Smart App Control settings; once off it can only be turned back on by reinstalling Windows) or run the CAD skills under WSL, where it does not apply. The wheel is built by the cadquery-ocp project, so signing it is not something this repository can do.

🛠️ Contributing

Branch from main and open PRs against main. For local contribution workflow, skill linking, and validation guidance, see CONTRIBUTING.md.