Outline

A lightweight desktop CAD for sketching 2D outlines and extruding them into 3D-printable parts.

Outline is a cross-platform native application for designing simple 3D-printable parts — cookie cutters, stamps, molds, stencils — directly from 2D sketches and reference images.

It is intentionally small, fast, and focused. It is not a full CAD suite. It does one thing: from a 2D outline, produce a printable mesh.

Features

• 2D sketch viewport with pan, zoom, and grid snap
• Drawing tools: polyline and rectangle
• Multi-selection, undo/redo, delete
• Reference image import (PNG, JPG) with scale-by-reference
• Real 2D polygon offset (inside / outside / center)
• Wall mesh generation with configurable height and thickness
• 3D preview (Three.js) with orbit, pan, zoom, and wireframe overlay
• STL export (binary and ASCII) validated before write
• Native desktop app on Windows, macOS, and Linux

Screenshots

Add screenshots or a short GIF here. Drop them in docs/ (untracked) or a media/ folder.

Why

Generic CAD tools (Fusion 360, FreeCAD, Blender) are powerful but heavy for the simple case of "I want to make a cookie cutter of this image." Outline skips constraints, assemblies, and timelines and gives you a fast, native path from sketch to printable mesh.

Tech Stack

• Shell: Tauri 2 (Rust + webview)
• UI: React 18 + TypeScript + Vite
• State: Zustand
• 2D rendering: HTML5 Canvas
• 3D rendering: Three.js
• Core, geometry, export: Rust workspace (outline-core, geometry, export)

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+ and pnpm
• Rust 1.75+
• Platform-specific Tauri deps — see the Tauri prerequisites

Install

pnpm install

Run in development

pnpm dev

This launches the Tauri dev server with hot reload.

Build a production binary

pnpm build

The Tauri bundler produces installers for your current platform in apps/desktop/src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Project Layout

apps/desktop/             React + TypeScript frontend
  src/                    UI source
  src-tauri/              Tauri shell, Rust command adapters

crates/
  outline-core/           Project model, domain commands, validation
  geometry/               2D/3D geometry, offsets, mesh generation
  export/                 File format exporters (STL)

The Rust core is UI-agnostic and can be tested without Tauri. The frontend is a thin shell that captures user intent and calls typed commands.

Quality Gate

The project ships with a single script that runs every check:

pnpm quality

It runs cargo fmt, cargo clippy, cargo test, frontend build, frontend tests, and file-size guards. Use it before opening a pull request.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md before opening an issue or pull request.

Good first issues are tagged good first issue.

Security

To report a vulnerability, please follow SECURITY.md. Do not file public issues for security reports.

License

MIT

Acknowledgments

• The Tauri team for making native desktop apps pleasant to build
• The Rust, React, and Three.js communities