MobileCAD

CAD for Android phones and tablets, built on FreeCAD's modelling engine with a touch-first interface.

Website · Download the latest APK · Android 8 or newer, about 1 GB free space

MobileCAD is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by the FreeCAD project or the FreeCAD Project Association; "FreeCAD" is their trademark and is used here only to say what MobileCAD is built on.

License

MobileCAD is free software: GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (see LICENSE). It includes FreeCAD (LGPL-2.1-or-later), Open CASCADE Technology (LGPL-2.1 with exception), Qt 6 (LGPL-3.0), Gmsh (GPL-2.0-or-later), CalculiX (GPL-2.0), IfcOpenShell (LGPL-3.0) and other components; the app's About ▸ Open-source licenses screen lists them all with their license texts (generated by release/gen_notices.py). FreeCAD's command icons are LGPL-2.1-or-later, with the exceptions credited in app/app/src/main/assets/licenses/freecad-icons.txt.

The corresponding source of every release is this repository plus the archives attached to each GitHub Release: FreeCAD at the commit built with our patch, and the (L)GPL dependencies (Open CASCADE, Qt, Gmsh, CalculiX, MED, IfcOpenShell), made by release/make_source.sh.

Layout

Path	What
app/	Android app (Kotlin / Jetpack Compose UI, JNI bridge in app/app/src/main/cpp)
engine/	Cross-build scripts for FreeCAD and its dependencies, patches, and the Python bridge (engine/python/mobilecad)
research/	Generators for the command catalog from FreeCAD's sources
branding/	Logo (make_logo.py generates the SVG master and the app's vector icons)
release/	License notices, source archives, website (make_site.py), screenshots (shot.sh) and launch video (video/)
docs/	The website, served by GitHub Pages (generated: python3 release/make_site.py --github)

Building

Everything is built from upstream source (pinned with SHA-256 in engine/sources.lock), on Debian 13 with Android NDK 29; fdroid/README.md lists the Debian packages and has a container recipe. Build and stage the native runtime for one ABI, then build the APK with Gradle:

engine/build_all.sh arm64-v8a                      # or x86_64 for the emulator; FCDEPS = build root (default ~/Android/fcdeps)
cd app && ./gradlew :app:assembleArm64Release      # or :app:assembleX86Debug

Release builds are signed when ~/Android/keys/mobilecad-release.properties exists (storeFile, storePassword, keyAlias, keyPassword); otherwise they come out unsigned. F-Droid builds the same way (fdroid/app.mobilecad.yml).