Features
What Extrudo does
Extrudo is parametric CAD for 3D printing that runs in your browser. This page lists what it can do, and the table further down says which files it reads and writes.
Latest build marks what is in the latest build and comes to the stable app with the next release.
Sketch with constraints
Every part starts as a flat drawing on a plane or on a face of the model. Constraints and dimensions hold it in shape, so changing one number moves everything that depends on it.
-
Drawing tools
Lines with tangent arcs, rectangles, circles, arcs, polygons, slots, ellipses and points, plus splines through points or by control points, and conics.
-
Constraints as you draw
Thirteen constraint tools, from coincident and tangent to symmetric and equal. Many are added for you while you draw, and only when they fit.
-
Dimensions with names
A driving dimension can carry a name and an expression, and other features can use it. Change it and the sketch solves again.
-
See what is still free
Colours show which curves can still move, the palette counts what is left, and a dimension that would over-constrain the sketch asks before it is added.
-
Edit tools
Trim, extend, break, fillet, chamfer, offset, mirror, move, copy, scale and patterns. Each one is a single undo step.
-
Text
Text in one of the bundled fonts or your own TTF, OTF or WOFF file, which is kept inside the design. Extrude it, or emboss it onto a face.
-
Work from the model
Sketch on any flat face, project edges, vertices and whole bodies, or cut a body with the sketch plane. Drawing near a body's edge snaps to it and projects it for you.
-
Bring a drawing in
Import an SVG or DXF file into a sketch as exact curves, or lay a picture on a plane and trace it at its real size.
Real solids
Parts are built on Open CASCADE, an open-source geometry kernel, so circles stay circles and fillets stay round. The model only becomes triangles when you export a mesh.
-
Extrude and revolve
To a distance, through everything, or up to a face or a body; on one side, both sides or symmetric; with a taper. Each makes a new body, or joins, cuts or intersects.
-
Sweep, loft and coil
Sweep a profile along a path with a twist or a change of scale, loft through sections, or wind a coil for springs and spirals.
-
Fillet and chamfer
Round or bevel up to 32 sets of edges, each with its own size. A fillet's radius can change along its edge, and when one is too big the message says how far it can go.
-
Shell
Hollow a body with walls of a set thickness, take faces away to open it, and give chosen faces a wall of their own.
-
Holes
Simple, counterbored or countersunk, blind or through. Presets cover M2 to M8 clearance holes and M2 to M5 heat-set inserts.
-
Threads
Modelled threads, ready to print: ISO metric, UNC and UNF, trapezoidal, buttress, PCO-1881 bottle necks and tapered NPT, with one start or several. The size can fit itself to the face.
-
Patterns and mirror
Rectangular, circular or along a path, of bodies or of features. Click an instance to leave it out, or drag a handle for more of them.
-
Emboss and deboss
Put text or a profile onto a flat face, wrap it round a cylinder or a cone, or project it onto a curved surface.
-
Body tools
Combine bodies (join, cut, intersect), split, move or copy, mirror, scale and draft them, offset or press-pull a face, and add ribs.
-
Primitives and construction
Box, cylinder, sphere and torus to start from, and planes, axes and points built from the geometry you already have.
-
Components and joints Latest build
Group bodies into components, connect them with rigid, revolute or slider joints, move them through their range and check the clearance as they go.
Parameters everywhere
A design is a recipe: a timeline of features, each with its inputs. Change an input and everything after it is built again.
-
Expressions with units
Every number field takes an expression with units, like
wall * 1.5 + 2 mm, and shows what it comes to as you type. -
Parameters
Named values in one dialog, used by sketches and features alike. A named dimension is a parameter too.
-
Customizer
Put the parameters that matter on sliders, in groups, and save sets of values as configurations, such as Small and Large.
-
Timeline
Roll back to any step, drag features into a new order, suppress the ones you don't need, and fold the ones that belong together into a group.
-
Fixing references
When an edit takes away a face that a later feature used, Extrudo shows where it was and lets you pick its replacement.
-
Undo and versions
Every change can be undone. Save named versions inside the design, then restore one or open it as a copy.
Made for printing
The 3D Print tab has what it takes to get a part off the screen and onto the bed.
-
Place on bed
Pick the face to print on, and the part turns and drops onto the bed. Spin it to fit the plate.
-
Overhangs
Shade every face steeper than your angle, measured from the bed or from a face you pick as the bottom.
-
Wall thickness
Find the walls thinner than your minimum, two line widths unless you set another, and see where the thinnest one is.
-
Print info
Volume, weight, filament length and cost, worked out from your material, walls, line width and infill.
-
Print tolerance
One clearance for the whole design (tight, normal or loose) that hole presets and threads take into account, so parts that fit together print that way.
-
Look inside, measure
Cut the model with up to three section planes or a box, and measure distances, angles, areas and volumes.
-
Export and send
3MF with names, colours and units, STL, or STEP for other CAD programs. The desktop app hands the model straight to PrusaSlicer, OrcaSlicer, Bambu Studio or Cura.
-
Templates and examples
Start from a wall bracket, a storage box, a box with a lid or a circuit board enclosure, and change their parameters.
Import and export
Bring in what you have, and take out what your slicer or another CAD program needs. Files are read and written on your own computer; nothing is uploaded.
| Format | Import | Export |
|---|---|---|
| Extrudo design .extrudo | Yes: Opens as a new design, with its versions and the files it carries. | Yes: The whole design: timeline, parameters, versions and attached files. |
| STEP .step .stp | Yes: Exact solid bodies, with their colours. | Yes: Exact bodies with their names and colours. Components as assemblies Latest build |
| 3MF .3mf | Yes: Mesh bodies, in the file's own unit. | Yes: Meshes with their names, colours and unit, at the resolution you pick. Components grouped Latest build |
| STL .stl | Yes: A mesh body, from binary or text STL. | Yes: Binary STL, at the resolution you pick. |
| OBJ .obj | Yes: A mesh body. | No |
| OpenSCAD .scad | Yes: Compiled in your browser into a mesh body. Its customizer variables become fields you can change. | No |
| f3d design .f3d | Yes: A new design with the file's parameters, sketches, extrudes, fillets and chamfers. A report lists what was left out. Latest build | No |
| SVG .svg | Yes: Paths and shapes into an open sketch, as exact curves. | Yes: A sketch's curves, or its profiles filled. |
| DXF .dxf | Yes: Lines, arcs, circles, polylines, ellipses, splines and blocks into an open sketch. | Yes: A sketch's curves or profiles, as DXF R12. |
| Pictures .png .jpg .webp | Yes: A canvas on a plane to trace over, calibrated to its real size. | No |
| Fonts .ttf .otf .woff | Yes: Fonts for sketch text, kept inside the design. | No |
| TypeScript .ts | No | Yes: The code that builds the design again, through Export as Script. |
| Plugins .extrudo-plugin | Yes: Installs the plugin's features and commands. | No |
- A mesh (STL, 3MF, OBJ or OpenSCAD) has to be a closed solid. You can cut, join, move and split mesh bodies, but a mesh has no exact edges or faces to fillet or shell.
- Every imported file is stored inside the design, so it travels with the design.
- Imports are in Home › Files. Models export from Export Model, sketches from the Sketch tab's Export.
Scripts, macros and plugins
When clicking gets repetitive, write it down. Code runs in a sandbox and builds the same features you would make by hand.
-
Script feature
Write TypeScript inside the design to make features from loops and maths. It reads the design's parameters and is built again with the rest of the timeline.
-
Record a macro
Record what you do and get it back as a script, to reuse it or to replace the steps it recorded. Export as Script does the same for a whole design.
-
Plugins
Install plugins that add their own features and commands. A design carries the plugins it uses, so it opens on a machine that lacks them.
-
Document API
A documented TypeScript API builds designs in code, with every feature type, its inputs and the names of its faces.
-
Command line
From the source repository,
extrudoopens a design without a browser, sets its parameters and exports STL, 3MF or STEP.
Your designs stay with you
No account, no server holding your work, and the code is open.
-
Saved as you go
Designs are saved in your browser a moment after each change. Nothing is sent anywhere, and there is nothing to sign up for.
-
Works offline
After the first visit, Extrudo opens without a connection. Install it from the browser's menu to give it a window of its own.
-
Linked folders
In Chrome and Edge, keep designs as
.extrudofiles in a folder on your disk, written back as you work. -
Desktop app
For Linux, Windows and macOS:
.extrudofiles open from your file manager, and Send to Slicer hands a model to your slicer. Download it. -
Free and open source
GPL-3.0, built in the open on GitHub. The file format is documented and MIT-licensed, so other programs can read your designs.
-
Help where you need it
A five-step tour for your first part, short clips in the main tools' tooltips, and F1 for the guide's page on the tool under the pointer.
Try it now
Nothing to install and no account. Open it and start a sketch.