From empty screen to printable file

Open a document

Go to your Dashboard and click New Project. That is it — you are looking at an empty 3D space with three grey planes in the middle. Nothing to install, nothing to set up.

You do not have to name it now. Click the name at the top when you want to change it.

Start a sketch

A sketch is a flat drawing, and every solid begins as one. Click one of the three planes to say which flat surface you want to draw on, then click Create Sketch.

The view rotates to look straight down at that plane, and the toolbar switches to drawing tools. You are now drawing in 2D, like on paper.

Later on you can also sketch directly on a flat face of a shape you already made — that is how you add a boss or cut a pocket into an existing part.

Draw the shape

Use Rectangle R, Circle C, or Line L to draw the outline you want. Do not worry about getting the size right by eye.

To set an exact size, use Dimension D: click a line or a circle, then type the number. The drawing snaps to match it. This is the part that makes CAD different from drawing software — the number is the truth, not the pixels.

The one rule that matters: your outline has to close. A rectangle works. A circle works. Three lines that do not quite meet at the corners will not, because a shape with a gap has no inside to fill.

When the outline is done, click Finish Sketch.

Make it 3D

Now give the flat shape thickness. Click Extrude E, click inside your closed outline, and either drag the arrow or type a distance. A flat rectangle becomes a block. A circle becomes a cylinder.

That is genuinely the core of it. Most parts are a few extrudes stacked together.

Two options worth knowing on the Extrude panel: Cut removes material instead of adding it — that is how you make holes and pockets — and Symmetric grows the shape equally in both directions.

Need a shape that is round in profile, like a bottle or a wheel? Use Revolve V instead: it spins your outline around a line to make the solid.

Refine it

With a solid on screen, the Modify tools work directly on it — no sketch needed. Click the edges or faces you want to change, then pick a tool:

Fillet rounds sharp edges. Chamfer cuts them at an angle. Shell hollows the part out to a wall thickness, turning a block into a box. Hole puts a properly sized hole in a face.

Rounding edges is not only cosmetic — sharp interior corners concentrate stress, and rounded ones are usually stronger and easier to manufacture.

Change anything, at any point

Look at the Timeline along the bottom. Every step you took is there in order. Double-click any one of them and change it — a dimension, an extrude distance, a fillet size — and everything built afterwards rebuilds around the change.

This is what "parametric" means, and it is the reason CAD is worth learning: you never have to start over. Made the plate 60mm and it should have been 75mm? Change the number. The holes, the fillets, and the shell all follow.

Your work saves to your account automatically as you go, so there is no Save button to remember.

Export it

When the part is ready, open the Export menu at the top and pick the format you need:

STL is the one for 3D printing — take it straight to your slicer. STEP is the one for engineering: it keeps the real curves and surfaces, so another CAD program can carry on editing it. OBJ suits rendering and animation. On Pro, 3MF and AMF are newer printing formats that carry more information than STL.

The file downloads to your computer. Nothing else needs to happen — it is yours, and the Free plan allows commercial use, so you can sell what you make.