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CADCraft Tutorial: Draw, Dimension, Save and Reopen a DXF

Complete a small CADCraft desktop drawing with real screenshots, original DXF files and verified commands; then repeat a basic edit in your browser.

1. Download the sample and open it

First run the matching desktop package。Download practice-plate.dxf below. In CADCraft choose File → Open (Ctrl+O), select it and confirm Open. The canvas should show a 100 × 60 rectangle and a radius-10 circle centered at 50,30. These are drawing units; they do not establish a printer scale.

Download original DXF

Native CADCraft with two original entities — Starting state: one polyline rectangle and one circle.

If the command line is hidden, use Ctrl+9 to show it. Click its input at the bottom of the canvas before typing. Type commands in English even when the menus are Chinese. Esc cancels the current command.

2. Add a second circle

At the command line type the line below, then press Enter. Spaces separate the command, center and radius. Success: a radius-5 circle appears at 25,30, to the left of the original circle.

CIRCLE 25,30 5

To build the starting drawing yourself instead, create a new drawing (Ctrl+N), then run each line and press Enter after each. Use either the sample or this route, so you do not duplicate the geometry.

RECTANG 0,0 100,60
CIRCLE 50,30 10
CIRCLE 25,30 5

3. Create an annotation layer and dimension the width

Type -LAYER M ANNOTATION and press Enter. This creates and selects ANNOTATION; the LAYER options prompt remains. Press Enter once more to finish the layer command. Then enter the dimension and zoom lines separately.

-LAYER M ANNOTATION
(press Enter again to finish LAYER)
DIMLINEAR 0,0 100,0 0,-15
ZOOM E

Success: the width dimension reads 100 below the rectangle. ANNOTATION is the current layer, and the drawing has four top-level entities: one polyline, two circles and one dimension.

Edited CADCraft drawing with two circles and a width dimension — Actual edited desktop frame.

4. Save a copy, reopen and inspect it

Choose File → Save As, keep DXF and save a new filename such as practice-plate-complete.dxf. Keep the original sample.
Use File → Open and choose the saved copy. Confirm both circles, the rectangle and the 100 dimension remain.
Compare your result with our completed DXF and PNG below. The PNG is a flattened rendering, not an editable drawing.

Saved DXF reopened in native CADCraft — Save/reopen retained four entities and the annotation layer.

Completed DXF · Rendered PNG

Optional CLI check: open PowerShell in the portable app folder. Replace INPUT and OUTPUT with full file paths, keeping output separate from input. Run info first; stop on an error. The convert command below was tested on the saved DXF.

.\cadcraft-cli.exe info "INPUT.dxf"
.\cadcraft-cli.exe convert "INPUT.dxf" "OUTPUT.png"

5. Try the browser version with the same original file

Open our CADCraft browser build。Click inside the editor, press Ctrl+O and select practice-plate.dxf. Click its command line, enter CIRCLE 25,30 5, then press Enter. Ctrl+S downloads a DXF; it does not silently save over your local source. Use Ctrl+O to reopen the downloaded copy.

Browser CADCraft reopening a saved three-entity DXF — Browser check: rectangle and two circles. This separate sample did not include the desktop dimension.

Both the automatic renderer and CPU fallback passed this simple Chromium workflow. We did not test mobile drafting, large drawings or DWG browser round trips.

Compatibility and AutoCAD comparison · Official source and support