The Full Feature Tour

Release Highlights

What’s New — Summer 2026

The July 2026 wave gives each drafting profession the tools it reaches for on day one. For the machine shop: full ASME Y14.5 GD&T (feature control frames, all 14 characteristics, datum symbols), center marks & centerlines, hole tables, weld & surface-finish symbols, and a complete revision workflow — clouds, numbered ▵ tags, and a self-maintaining revision history block. For surveyors and civil: COGO traverse entry (type the deed, get the boundary — with a live closure report), bearing & distance, line/curve tables, stationing, automatic acreage, and one-click scale bars and north arrows. For fabricators and sign makers: Text to Outlines — any installed font traced into cut-ready vector letterforms. Underneath it all: Block Attributes with live BOM/schedule extraction, PDF Underlay with two-click calibration, running object snaps, multi-select, named dimension styles, exact area inquiry, and math in every input field. And the newest arrivals: wall tools — click a centerline, get a double-line wall, then click any wall and a door (with its swing) or window punches itself in — and HVAC duct runs with true radiused elbows and size labels riding the runs, built on the same engine.

• The grid grew up — separate X and Y spacing (set it to a component's pin pitch: 0.156,0.1 in one entry), three display styles (dots, graph-paper lines, drafting-film crosses), and formulas right in the spacing fields (4.8/12). Spec’d by a beta tester on a phone call; shipped twenty-five minutes later
• Walls, doors & windows — the door click is the whole spec: position picks the hinge end, the side you click picks the swing. Works on imported floor plans too
• HVAC duct runs — tangent-exact elbows (dimension one: the radii measure true), 24×12 labels riding every run
• Revision workflow — clouds, numbered ▵ tags, and a self-maintaining REV | DESCRIPTION | DATE | BY block
• COGO + closure — type the deed, watch the closure report live, click the Point of Beginning

Block Attributes — Your Drawing Writes Its Own Parts List

Attach data fields to any symbol — designator, part number, rating, room number — and every placement carries its own values. Placing a symbol prompts you for each field, with smart auto-increment (place LED7, the next one offers LED8). Then the payoff: Extract Attributes → Table walks every placed symbol and builds a live, on-canvas table — a bill of materials with quantity counts, or a schedule with one row per instance. It lands in C3’s full spreadsheet engine, so it formats, prints, and exports to CSV like any other table. Edit values or add symbols, hit Refresh, and every extraction table in the drawing updates in place.

• Shared vs. per-instance fields — a part number lives once on the symbol; designators live on each placement. Change a shared value and every instance (and every extraction) sees it
• Visible labels or data-only — show a field as text beside the symbol, or keep it invisible metadata that still extracts
• Full DXF round-trip — AutoCAD blocks with attributes import with their data live and editable (ATTDEF/ATTRIB), and C3 exports them back so AutoCAD’s own tools see your data

Most 2D CAD makes you export to a spreadsheet to build a BOM. C3 keeps the document in the drawing — where it prints with the sheet and stays current with one click.

PDF Underlay — Trace Over Any PDF, at True Scale

Insert any page of any PDF as a faded, locked background image and trace over it with real C3 geometry — old blueprints, scanned drawings, datasheet footprints, hand sketches. The killer detail is Calibrate Scale: click both ends of a feature whose real length you know (the arrowheads of a printed dimension are perfect), type the true distance, and the underlay rescales so everything you trace is dimensionally correct. The underlay is click-through while you work — search, selection, and snap all ignore it — and it prints faded so check prints show your trace over the ghost.

Running Object Snaps — Every Snap at Once

The multi-snap behavior AutoCAD users expect, on by default: endpoint, midpoint, center, quadrant, intersection, perpendicular, tangent, and nearest snaps all live simultaneously, with a shape-coded glyph (square = endpoint, triangle = midpoint, circle = center, X = intersection…) showing exactly which snap you’re about to get. Grid snap is the safety net when nothing else is in range.

And the classic system is untouched: keys 1–7 still give one exclusive snap mode each — grid, vertex, none, intersect, tangent, perpendicular, nearest — your precision override for crowded geometry. Key 8 toggles between the two regimes. Choose your running-snap set from a non-modal palette you can leave open while you draw.

Window & Crossing Selection + Multi-Select

Drag left→right for a window (solid blue — selects what’s fully inside); drag right→left for a crossing (dashed green — selects everything it touches); Shift+click adds or removes single items. Then operate on the whole blue set at once: Delete, Move, Copy, Rotate, Scale, Mirror, or change Color, Line Type, and Layer — each with a single undo. Convert a selection to a permanent group (or a group back to a selection) with one click. Plain clicking works exactly as it always has.

Named Dimension Styles

The classic DIMSTYLE workflow: save the Dimension menu’s 18 appearance and format parameters — text size, arrows, witness lines, units format, accuracy, tolerances — as named styles like “Machining” or “Architectural”. One click of Use sets everything for new dimensions. Better: select a whole drawing’s worth of existing dimensions and Apply to Existing restyles them all — without ever touching what they measure, where their text sits, or any text override. Styles are global across drawings, travel inside your files, and survive restarts.

Area & Perimeter Inquiry

Click any closed shape — or just click inside any enclosed region — and get its area, perimeter, and centroid, computed with exact mathematics (a circle is πr², never an approximation; hatched regions report net area with holes subtracted; traced arc boundaries use true circular-segment math). A floating panel keeps an add/subtract running total — room A plus room B minus the stairwell — and Place Label drops the measurement as text at the region’s center.

Value Field Magnifier — Hold Shift, Read Any Number

C3’s menu readouts auto-shrink so long numbers always fit — and now no number is ever too small to read. Hover over any value field — an attribute readout, an offset distance, a coordinate — and hold Shift: a large floating readout appears beside the cursor, full precision, big monospaced digits. Release Shift and it’s gone. In editable fields it shows the full stored value to six decimals — often more digits than the field itself displays.

This one has a story: a beta tester suggested it in conversation, and it shipped in a working build the same night. That’s the feedback loop the C3 Pioneer Program runs on — real users, direct line to the developer, ideas that become features while you sleep.

Also new this summer: Match Properties (click a source, paint its color/linetype/widths/layer onto anything) · Find & Replace text across the whole drawing · Revision clouds · 100-level undo (up from 20) · editable hatch patterns and spacing on existing hatches · true mirror-image text (reflects like a stamp, in symbols and standalone) · dimensions inside symbols · a redesigned two-pane user guide in its own window · and a long list of print, export, and hit-testing fidelity fixes backed by an automated test suite that runs on every build.

The Version 3.0 Foundation

The capabilities below arrived with v3.0 and remain three things no other 2D CAD tool offers in the same form: Voice Commands, Dynamic Symbols (see the section above), and DWG Block Library Bulk Import (see the section above) — plus multi-window drawings, canvas spreadsheet tables, multi-leader annotations, and engineering tolerances with ordinate dimensioning.

Voice Commands — Drive C3 With Your Voice

C3 v3.0 adds a fourth way to operate the program. Alongside the sidebar menus, the hotkeys, and the existing Voice Guidance (the spoken prompts that talk you through each step), Voice Commands let you speak to C3 — and C3 listens.

Press ⌘V. A red microphone indicator appears in the upper-right corner. Say a command. C3 dispatches it the same way a hotkey or menu click would. Then keep drawing.

A Phrase for Every Menu and Tool

The built-in vocabulary covers the full sidebar — every main menu, every secondary menu, and the most common edit operations. A representative slice:

• Main menus — “main menu”, “lines menu”, “circles menu”, “boxes menu”, “polygons menu”, “arcs menu”, “text menu”, “stick text menu”, “dimensions menu”, “markers menu”, “edits menu”, “groups menu”, “symbols menu”, “layers menu”
• Secondary menus — “zoom menu”, “pan menu”, “plot menu”, “files menu”, “relimit menu”
• Edit operations — “edit search”, “edit delete”, “edit move”, “edit copy”, “edit trim”, “edit extend”
• View & navigation — “canvas color”, “redraw”, “hot keys”, “voice commands”
• System — “undo”, “redo”, “save drawing”, “cancel”

Built-in, Local, Private

Speech recognition runs on-device using Apple’s built-in Speech framework. No cloud round-trip. No API keys. No subscription. Your voice never leaves your Mac. The recognizer auto-stops a few seconds after a phrase is matched or after silence is detected.

Why Voice Commands Matter

A 2D CAD session is fundamentally about hands on the drawing — mouse on the canvas, keyboard for measurements. Reaching across the keyboard for a menu hotkey takes you out of flow. Voice Commands keep your hands on the drawing while your voice navigates. Need the Lines menu? Say it. Need to save? Say it. Need to find a primitive? Say “edit search” and click. This is the input modality that’s been missing from desktop CAD for forty years.

Voice Commands + Voice Guidance Together

Voice Commands (input, you → C3) and Voice Guidance (output, C3 → you) are independent features that work beautifully together. Tell C3 what to do, listen as C3 walks you through it, click as it prompts. Eyes never leave the canvas.

Multi Windows

C3 supports multiple independent windows — you can have two, three, or more drawings open at the same time, each in its own window, and drag primitives directly from one window to another.

Why Multi Windows Matters

Working with a single window means constantly saving, closing, opening, and copying between files. With multi windows, you can:

• Open a reference drawing alongside your working drawing — no more flipping back and forth. Keep a parts library, a standard detail sheet, or a previous revision visible while you work
• Drag and drop geometry between drawings — pick a primitive or group in one window, Option+click and drag it to another window, and it lands right where you drop it. All attributes (color, line type, layer, stroke width) come along for the ride
• Assemble drawings from multiple sources — open your master sheet in one window, load source files one by one in the other, and drag what you need across. No exporting, no importing, no clipboard
• Compare drawings side by side — open two versions of the same drawing to visually compare changes

Tables & Spreadsheet

Embed fully interactive spreadsheet-like tables directly on the drawing canvas. Create any number of tables with as many rows and columns as your project requires. Click any cell to type data directly — Tab moves right, Enter moves down, just like a spreadsheet.

• 34-function formula engine — SUM, AVG, COUNT, MIN, MAX, MEDIAN, IF, ROUND, trig functions, and more. Cell references (A1, B3) and ranges (A1:A10)
• Integrated toolbar — cell reference indicator, formula bar, alignment, bold, merge, insert row/column, currency and percent formatting — all rendered as part of the table, scaling with zoom
• CSV and XLSX import/export — exchange data with Excel, Google Sheets, and any spreadsheet program. Import auto-trims empty rows and columns. Append imported data to existing tables
• Scrollable tables — display a compact view with pinned headers while storing hundreds of rows. Mouse wheel scrolls through data
• Drag to reposition — grab the title bar and move the table anywhere on the drawing. Drag column separators to resize
• Table Manager — show, hide, export, and import tables from a central popup. Print full tables or specific row ranges independently of the drawing
• Fed by Block Attributes — Extract Attributes → Table builds live bills of materials and schedules straight from your placed symbols, refreshable with one click

Multi-Leader Annotations

Place a text annotation with unlimited arrow leader lines pointing to features across the drawing. The text box goes down first, then click to add as many arrows as you need — each one exits from the nearest edge of the text box automatically. Drag the text box to reposition while all arrows maintain their target locations. Add or remove individual leaders at any time.

• Smart box-edge routing — leader lines exit from the nearest edge of the text box based on arrow direction, working naturally across 360°
• Tested with 268+ leaders on a single text box with instant drag response
• Add Leader / Remove Leader — edit existing multi-leaders without recreating them

Dimension Tolerances & Ordinate Dimensions

Three tolerance modes for engineering dimensions: Symmetric (±0.005), Deviation (+0.010 / −0.003), and None. Tolerance values render as stacked fractions in smaller font after the dimension value.

Ordinate / Datum dimensions (Datum Horizontal and Datum Vertical) measure cumulative distance from a single reference point. Click the datum origin once, position the dimension line, then click as many target features as you need — each one creates a dimension showing the absolute distance from the datum. This is the equivalent of AutoCAD’s ordinate dimensioning system.

Symbols & Dynamic Blocks

C3 Turns Any Block or Symbol Into a Fully Dynamic One

Imported AutoCAD library, user-drawn symbol, static legacy block — it doesn’t matter. Mark stretch handles on any symbol with the mouse in under a minute, and every placement becomes parametric. Attach attribute data fields and your drawing builds its own bill of materials. Plus a bulk importer for your own DWG block libraries — proven by converting a 14,000-block AutoCAD library into organized, searchable C3 symbols in a single run.

Dynamic blocks & the block library, in depth →

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