ArchiCraft

ArchiCraft is a desktop application for drawing buildings as precise 3D models and saving them as IFCX (IFC5), the open buildingSMART format. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, works offline, and sends no data anywhere.

What it must do is specified in the SRS; what it is built with is in the technology choices.

Status

This is the first version: increment 0 of the SRS, the "walking skeleton" (SRS Appendix F). It covers:

• Projects from a default metric template (storeys, layers, 25 materials, tool defaults), with storeys, layers and materials editable in dialogs.
• Straight walls (single, chain, rectangle, rotated rectangle) and slabs (polygon, rectangle, rotated rectangle), with order-independent L and T wall junctions.
• Plan views generated from the 3D bodies (cut, projected and overhead lines, cut fills from materials), with snapping, typed distances and angles in any unit, and click or area selection.
• 3D views rendered with wgpu: perspective and parallel projection, presets, orbit, pan, zoom, picking, and four display modes.
• Properties panel and settings dialog for tool defaults and selections, with mixed values for multiple selections.
• Undo and redo for every change, through command objects.
• IFCX as the native format: spatial tree, IFC classes, names, meshes and materials that any IFCX viewer shows, plus the full parametric model in the declared archicraft:: namespace, so a saved project opens fully editable.
• Safe saving: atomic saves with backups, autosave to a separate recovery folder with recovery after a crash, and local crash reports.

Doors, windows, roofs, layered walls, columns, beams, stairs and the other SRS increments come next; the work is tracked with beads (bd ready).

Building and running

You need the Rust toolchain; rust-toolchain.toml selects the right version.

cargo run --release -p archicraft-app            # start ArchiCraft
cargo run --release -p archicraft-app -- my.ifcx  # open a project

On Linux, the application needs a Vulkan or OpenGL driver and, for file dialogs, an XDG desktop portal; standard desktops have both.

On macOS, scripts/package-macos.sh builds a release and packs it into target/dmg/ArchiCraft-<version>-macos-arm64.dmg, with ArchiCraft.app and a link to Applications to drag it to. It needs Xcode 26 or newer, whose actool compiles the app icon (below). The app is signed ad hoc; set CODESIGN_IDENTITY to sign it with a Developer ID instead. On another Mac, an ad hoc signed app opens only after the user allows it under System Settings → Privacy & Security.

scripts/package-linux.sh (a tarball with the executable, icon and desktop entry) and scripts/package-windows.sh (a zip with the executable, icon embedded; Git Bash, Windows SDK and Python with Pillow) do the same on Linux and Windows. Both take the app icon from ArchiCraft_Logo.png, rendered at 1024 px from the logo's source ArchiCraft_Logo.svg (rsvg-convert -w 1024 -h 1024 ArchiCraft_Logo.svg -o ArchiCraft_Logo.png, then copy both to crates/archicraft-app/assets/, whose PNG is also the window icon and the logo in the About window).

The macOS app's icon is the Icon Composer document packaging/macos/AppIcon.icon: a gradient fill from the logo's black (#000000) at the top to its grey (#292929) at the bottom, and the logo's white mark as the layer Assets/mark.svg, which holds the two <path> elements of ArchiCraft_Logo.svg in the same viewBox (0 0 1969 1969). macOS 26 and newer mask it, give it the size of the other icons in the Dock and draw it in the light, dark, clear and tinted appearances; package-macos.sh compiles it into Assets.car, plus an AppIcon.icns for macOS 11 to 15. When the logo changes, copy its paths into Assets/mark.svg and its colours into the fill (Icon Composer: Xcode → Open Developer Tool).

For Linux desktops there is also a Flatpak bundle, which GNOME Software, KDE Discover or flatpak install --user ArchiCraft-<version>-linux-<arch>.flatpak install with its menu entry and icons, and which they or flatpak uninstall com.graphicraft.archicraft remove again. scripts/package-flatpak.sh builds it into target/flatpak/ArchiCraft-<version>-linux-<arch>.flatpak on Linux with flatpak, flatpak-builder 1.4 or newer and Python with Pillow (on Debian 13 or Ubuntu 24.04 or later: apt install flatpak flatpak-builder python3-pil; the flatpak-builder 1.2 of Ubuntu 22.04 cannot build against the current freedesktop SDK). Installing it fetches the freedesktop runtime from Flathub when it is missing, and the bundle has no update source. The sandbox gets Wayland (X11 where there is no Wayland, with shared memory for it), the GPU for Vulkan or OpenGL, the home folder and the mount points of USB drives and other disks (/media, /run/media, /mnt), because a save writes a temporary file and backups next to the project and the recent projects reopen by path. Projects anywhere else open and save through the file dialogs, which grant access to the file alone, so they keep no backups. It gets no network. Inside the sandbox ArchiCraft cannot register itself as the handler for .ifcx files.

An in-between release for testers comes from the workflow Preview release: it packs a pushed commit into the DMG, the Linux tarball, the Flatpak bundle (ArchiCraft-<id>-linux-x86_64.flatpak) and the Windows zip and publishes the four packages with their checksums (SHA256SUMS.txt) as a GitHub pre-release. Start it with /preview-release in Claude Code, or gh workflow run preview-release.yml --ref main -f notes="What to try".

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗