Reference

Every command by family, the keys and mouse, units and functions, and the programs' options, in one place to look things up.

The full description of any command, with every value it takes and what it refuses, is one command away: command_list for an agent, craft3d-cli commands --filter <id> in a terminal.

Commands

3DCraft 0.1.1 has 174 commands. A command's id is its family and its name: feature.fillet.

Documents and files

Variables, tables and parameters

Sketches

Features

Assemblies

Looking, measuring and checking

MCP tools

What an agent gets over MCP (Install 3DCraft and connect an AI agent): command_list, command_run, command_batch, doc_inspect, doc_render_preview, selection_get, and, bridged to the window, control_call.

Keys and mouse

The window lists these under Help › Keyboard shortcuts (F1). On a Mac, ⌘ takes the place of Ctrl, except in Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab, which stay as they are.

The history keys work while the pointer is over the view or the feature list.

On a slider (a Jig's parameters, See-through, the section's Offset, the Studio and Analysis options): press the rail to put the knob there and drag it (Shift finer, Ctrl in whole steps); once clicked, the arrow keys or the wheel step it (Shift: ten steps); click its value (or press Enter over it) to type a value or an expression with units, Escape to give up; double-click the knob for its default. A whole number with a few values is a stepper instead: − and + beside the value (Using a Jig › The form).

The window, for agents and programs

What a person does with the window's buttons, an agent or a program does with ui.set and the other ui.* methods over the control channel (Programs on 3DCraft), and craft3d-cli render takes the same looks. control-protocol.md lists every field.

The appearance: ui.set {"appearance": "dark"} ("light", "system").

The studio look (The window › The studio look):

ui.set {"look": {"mode": "studio", "environment": "outdoor", "exposure": 0.5, "rotation": 90}}
craft3d-cli render part.3dcraft --out part.png --look studio --environment workshop

ui.set {"look": {"mode": "studio", "dof": {"fstop": 2, "focus": "selection"}, "edges": "soft", "bloom": 0.1}}
craft3d-cli render part.3dcraft --out part.png --look studio --fstop 4 --accumulate 32

• view.render focuses selection on the session's selection. craft3d-cli render has no selection or click, so give it a point (--focus X,Y,Z, from select.get or ui.pick), a distance, or centre.
• view.render and craft3d-cli render draw one frame unless accumulate (--accumulate) asks for more. They refuse a still whose frames together would take too long: all frames' samples over 2^26, about 34 frames of the default 800 × 600 picture with the CPU renderer; on the graphics card, up to 256 at any size.
• ui.screenshot with window: true waits until the window has averaged its frames, so the picture is the settled one; ui.set {"look": {"accumulate": 4}} settles sooner, 64 smoother. view.replay averages 16 per frame unless its look says otherwise.

Surface analysis (The window › Surface analysis); view.render takes the same object:

ui.set {"analysis": {"mode": "zebra", "stripes": 32, "direction": 30}}
ui.set {"analysis": {"mode": "curvature", "curvature": "mean", "combs": {"edges": true, "density": 60}}}
ui.set {"analysis": {"mode": "draft", "pull": [0, 0, 1], "minDraft": 2}}
ui.set {"analysis": null}

Zebra takes stripes (how many per turn), direction (turns the tunnel on the screen), width (the dark share of each stripe) and offset (slides them along). Curvature takes curvature (gaussian, mean or max) and range (by default the 95th percentile of the values). Draft takes pull and minDraft (degrees). combs draws the curvature of edges, or of iso-curves of a face.

A motion (The window › Playing a motion):

• view.motion {"t": 0.5, "collisions": true} shows the moment t, with the parts that collide in red.
• view.trace draws a point's path; "grow": true draws it only as far as the moment shown, so it grows while the motion plays. file.export {"path": "path.svg", "trace": "Trace 1"} exports it.
• In the window a trace is worked out in the background, so the motion keeps playing: the answer says "pending": true. view.trace {"name": "Trace 1", "wait": true} gives the points once they are there, or why they could not be made; it waits at most 2 s in the window, so ask again. ui.get lists every trace under traces, with pending or error. "background": false works it out in the command.
• motion.check checks the checks over the motion (Engineering checks › Over a motion), and view.replay {"dir": "frames", "motion": {"frames": 120}} films it.
• ui.set {"timeline": {"playQuality": "full"}} keeps the full look while a motion plays. ui.get › timeline.heavy says whether the motion is heavy (msPerMoment, suggestBake).

Recording the window. ui.record records the window itself, panels included, even while other windows cover it; with ui.advance, frame by frame, so every step of a played history is complete in the video.

Units, functions and names

The programs

craft3d, the window:

craft3d [FILE] [--control PORT] [--control-token-file FILE]
        [--automation-read-root DIR] [--automation-write-root DIR]
        [--state-dir DIR] [--renderer auto|cpu]
        [--recovery-dir DIR|none] [--autosave-interval SECONDS]
        [--recent-file FILE|none] [--window-size WIDTHxHEIGHT]

The state folder is 3dcraft in your state directory: on Linux $XDG_STATE_HOME or ~/.local/state, on macOS ~/Library/Application Support, on Windows %LOCALAPPDATA%. Environment variables stand in for the options of the same name: CRAFT3D_CONTROL_PORT, CRAFT3D_CONTROL_TOKEN_FILE, CRAFT3D_STATE_DIR, CRAFT3D_AUTOMATION_READ_ROOT, CRAFT3D_AUTOMATION_WRITE_ROOT, CRAFT3D_RENDERER, CRAFT3D_RECOVERY_DIR, CRAFT3D_AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL, CRAFT3D_RECENT_FILE and CRAFT3D_WINDOW_SIZE. CRAFT3D_AGENT_PORT is the first port Allow AI agents tries (7878 by default).

craft3d-cli, the command line (The command line and scripts):

File types

The technical details of every format are in file-formats.md, and of the control channel and MCP in control-protocol.md.

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