Every feature in PencilCAD

Three toolsets

The toolset chip, at the left of the page pill at the bottom of the screen, switches between Sketch, CAD and Cut: tap it and pick. Settings → Tools does the same. Your pages are the same in all three, so a drawing moves between them untouched.

• Sketch

  Pen, pencil, marker, highlighter, eraser, lasso and ruler, with drag-to-fill shading.

• CAD

  A left rail of Select, Line, Rectangle, Circle, Arc, Spline, Dimension, Trim, Fillet, Offset and Transform, with a constraint column beside it that shows only what fits your pick. Snap, units, Layers and More are at the top right.

• Cut

  A rail of Select, Shapes, Text, Combine, Tabs, Operations, Sheet and Layout, and one Make button at the top right for the Job, the Check, the export and Send.

• Hold to make lines

  Turn it on in Settings → Tools, and a scribble you hold still at the end becomes clean lines, arcs or a circle.

Sketching

The scratch-paper side of PencilCAD: open it and draw.

• Pen, marker and pencil

  Crisp opaque ink, a broad translucent marker and soft graphite, in black, blue, red or any colour you pick.

• Highlighter

  Translucent ink for marking up a drawing without covering it. It keeps its own weight and colour.

• Eraser

  Erases ink, shapes and fills.

• Lasso

  Circle ink to move, copy or delete it.

• Ruler

  A straightedge on the page. Strokes follow its edge.

• Drag to fill

  Drag the ink swatch onto a closed face and it fills to your lines, closing small gaps at the corners.

Lines and shapes

Everything you draw with the CAD tools stays editable.

• Line

  Drag a straight segment. Its ends snap, weld onto corners, and joined lines move together.

• Shapes

  Boxes, circles, ellipses, arcs and curves. Sketch a curve roughly and it’s cleaned up when you lift.

• Edit by dragging

  Drag a corner, an end or a handle. Lines joined to it follow, and their dimensions update.

• Exact sizes

  Tap a dimension’s label to type a length. With a keyboard, type the size while you drag, such as 80,40, then Return.

• Text

  Tap the paper to add a label for a part name, a material or a note.

• Barrel roll

  With Apple Pencil Pro, roll the Pencil to turn the box or ellipse you’re drawing.

Snaps

Lines and shapes land where you mean them to. The magnet at the top right holds the snap and guide settings.

• Grid

  With Snap to grid on, ends land on isometric, square or dot grid points.

• Points

  Ends, midpoints, centres, quadrants, intersections and points on a curve.

• Directions

  Polar angles, and tangent, perpendicular or parallel to what’s already there.

• Hover preview

  On iPads with Pencil hover, the snap a press will land on shows before the tip touches.

Dimensions and units

Sizes are part of the drawing, not ink on top of it. Guide: How to dimension an isometric drawing.

• Dimension

  Drag point to point for a dimension with witness ticks and end marks, labelled with its length.

• True isometric lengths

  On isometric paper, a dimension along an axis reads the length it stands for, not its length on screen.

• Radius and diameter

  Dimension a circle or an arc as R or ⌀.

• Units

  Millimetres, centimetres, metres, inches to 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32, decimal inches, or feet and inches. Pick them in the units chip at the top right.

• Page scale

  Set the page’s scale once in the units chip and every dimension on it relabels to match. Line and shape weights are there too.

• Not to scale

  Type a value the line doesn’t measure and its label is underlined, as on a paper drawing.

Constraints

Make a sketch exact without leaving the Pencil. Guide: Parametric sketching with Apple Pencil.

• Write a size

  In CAD, write 120, 3 1/2, 2′6″, R20, ⌀40 or 45° beside a line, a circle or two lines. It becomes a driving dimension.

• Draw a mark

  Ticks for equal, arrows for parallel, a corner box for square, and a loop around two ends to join them.

• Thirteen constraints

  Coincident, horizontal, vertical, parallel, perpendicular, tangent, equal, concentric, midpoint, symmetric, on, angle and fix.

• AutoConstrain

  Adds the sizes and constraints a sketch is missing, at the sizes it has now, so nothing moves.

• Fully defined

  A fully defined sketch turns green. Press a point to see the way it can still move.

• Clash cards

  When a new constraint fights one you have, a card names it and offers to replace it in one undo step.

Edit, select and layers

The editing tools that turn a sketch into a drawing.

• Trim and extend

  Trim, Extend and Break share a button on the rail. Tap or drag across an outline to cut it back to the crossings, or extend a line to meet the next one.

• Fillet, chamfer, offset

  Fillet and Chamfer share a button, and Offset has its own. Round or bevel a corner to a size, or copy an outline at a set distance.

• Select

  Tap shapes or drag a box around them, then use Transform to move, rotate, scale or mirror them. Select All is in More.

• Patterns

  Transform also repeats a selection along a line or around a centre.

• Copy and paste

  Shapes copy with their dimensions and constraints, and paste onto any page.

• Layers

  Up to 10 layers a page. Show, hide or lock each one, and pick the one you draw on.

Import

More → Import… brings in what you want to trace or build on. Guide: Tracing a photo to scale.

• Photos and scans

  A photo, a document scan or an image from Files, or drag a picture onto the page or paste it.

• PDF plans

  Pick the page of a PDF you want to trace.

• Underlay

  Images and PDFs sit under the drawing at 50% on a locked layer, so you trace without moving them.

• Set its scale

  Tap two points on the underlay and type the distance between them.

• DXF and SVG

  Lines, arcs, circles, ellipses, splines and text come in as editable shapes at true size, with their layers and colours.

Export and share

Share a page from More, at the size you drew it. Guides: From iPad sketch to DXF and designing for a laser cutter. For a cutter, laser or router, use Make in Cut.

• PDF to scale

  Fits one Letter or A4 sheet at a standard scale, with a check bar to measure with a ruler.

• SVG

  Sized in millimetres or inches, for laser cutters, Inkscape and Illustrator.

• DXF

  R2000, with layers and colours, for Fusion, Onshape, Shapr3D and other CAD apps.

• PNG

  A picture of the page for messages and notes.

Cut toolset

Everything between a finished drawing and the machine: a rail for the parts and the sheet, and one Make button for the job, the check and the export. Guides: Cricut cut files on iPad and laser cutting on iPad.

• Sheet

  Cricut mats (12 × 12 in, 12 × 24 in, Joy 4.5 × 6.5 in and 4.5 × 12 in, Joy Xtra 8.5 × 12 in), laser bed presets to check against your machine, or Custom. Set the material, thickness, kerf and grain here too.

• Layout

  Nests your parts on the sheet with copies and turns, and spills onto more sheets when they don’t fit. As drawn keeps your own arrangement.

• Operations

  Cut, score, engrave, draw or skip, per layer or per shape, each in its own exact colour.

• Text

  System fonts, fonts you import, and Relief SingleLine, a single-line font for pens, scoring and engraving. Outline turns text into shapes.

• Combine

  Weld shapes into one, or combine them in other ways. The originals stay on the page as construction.

• Tabs

  Small uncut bridges that hold your parts in the sheet.

• Check

  Tap Make → Check and export… and it catches live text, parts off the sheet, open outlines, double cuts, overlaps, features too small to cut, size limits, empty or hidden layers, bend problems and router depth. Most have a one-tap fix.

• Kerf test

  A test card for your cutter: cut the comb, read which slot fits, and save the kerf.

Export for and Send

Tap Make, then Check and export… to run the check and export, or Send to… to upload to a machine. Export for makes the file your program expects, with a profile for each, and the file follows your Cut layout. Send passes it on.

• LightBurn

  An SVG in millimetres, in LightBurn’s palette colours.

• Glowforge

  An SVG where strokes cut and fills engrave.

• Cricut Design Space

  An SVG with one layer per operation, and a 12 in size check.

• Laser (print driver)

  A PDF of hairline vectors, with the page the size of your sheet.

• Shaper Origin and Generic

  A Shaper SVG for Shaper Origin, or a generic SVG or DXF R2000 with one layer per operation.

• Upload to your router

  Sends G-code over Wi-Fi to FluidNC, grblHAL, ESP3D and Onefinity/Buildbotics controllers. PencilCAD only uploads and never starts the machine: you load, zero and press start.

• Hand off

  Through Files, AirDrop or iCloud Drive to Cricut Design Space, Silhouette Go, xTool, Glowforge, LightBurn, Shaper Origin, Carbide Create, Easel, Mach4, SendCutSend, OSH Cut and Ponoko.

• Epilog

  Makes a hairline SVG, then opens the laser’s own page in Safari.

• Your machines

  Machines you set up are saved on the iPad, ready for the next Send.

Router and laser jobs

Make → Job turns the layout into toolpaths for a CNC router, or settings for a laser. Guide: sketch to G-code for a CNC router.

• Toolpaths

  Profile, pocket, engrave and V-carve, plus adaptive clearing.

• Tool library

  Flat, single-flute, V and ball bits.

• Cut settings

  Material, step-down, climb, ramp and tabs, with zero at the top of the stock.

• Capped feeds

  Feeds are capped, and the app suggests a test on scrap first.

• Plan and preview

  The plan runs in the background with progress and Stop. Scrub through the preview on your drawing; edit the drawing and the plan goes stale.

• One file per tool

  One G-code file per tool, named in order, like “1 of 2 · 6 mm flat”.

• Laser settings

  Power, speed, passes, air and hatch, set for each layer.

• Laser test grid

  A grid of power × speed squares. Cut it, then pick the best square.

Sheet metal

Turn on the Sheet metal switch in Sheet to draw parts that bend. Guide: sheet metal flat patterns on iPad.

• Metal sheets

  Pick the material, thickness and alloy.

• Bends

  Any line can become a bend, with its angle, direction, radius and K-factor, labelled like “60° bend (120° inside)”.

• Flanges

  Tap an edge to add a flange.

• Bend checks

  Flags problems such as a bend too near an edge or a hole.

• Shop rules

  Rules for SendCutSend, OSH Cut or Generic.

• Flat DXF

  The flat pattern exports as a DXF with the bend lines on a BEND layer.

Paper and pages

A pad of paper that never runs out of the kind you like. Guide: Isometric paper on iPad.

• Six papers

  Isometric, dot grid, grid, lined, calligraphy and blank, in Small, Medium or Large.

• Big pages

  Each page is twice the screen each way. Zoom from the whole page to 8×.

• Up to 50 pages

  Swipe with two fingers to turn pages, and pull past the last one for a new sheet.

• Tear it out

  Hold two fingers on a page to tear it off. Undo on the page pill, or Settings → Restore last page, brings it back.

• Appearance

  Warm paper or a dark chalkboard, or follow the system. Bolder lines and a red margin are one switch each.

Apple Pencil

Made for the Pencil, down to the gestures.

• Hover

  With the drawing tools and Dimension, see where a press will land. With a constraint chosen, see what a tap will pick.

• Squeeze

  On Apple Pencil Pro, squeeze for a palette of your recent tools at the tip.

• Double-tap

  Switches to the eraser and back, or to your last tool, following the system setting.

• Handwriting, offline

  Numbers you write are read on the iPad. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Keyboard shortcuts

With a Magic Keyboard or any Bluetooth keyboard. Hold ⌘ to see them in the app.

iCloud and iPhone

Your pages, everywhere you have your Apple ID, with nothing to sign up for.

• iCloud sync

  Turn on Settings → iCloud → Sync with iCloud and pages sync through your own private iCloud database, page by page.

• Works offline

  Draw anywhere. Changes catch up the next time you’re online.

• iPhone viewer

  On iPhone, PencilCAD shows your synced pages to pan, zoom and share. Drawing happens on the iPad.

• Private

  No account. We never see your pages, and anonymous usage stats are one switch in Settings → Privacy.

Requirements