Installation

Command line tools

PartCAD command line tools are implemented in Python and, in theory, available on all platforms where Python is available. However, it is only getting tested on Linux, MacOS and Windows.

$ python -m pip install -U partcad-cli

Note

PartCAD works best when conda is installed. If that doesn’t help (e.g. MacOS+arm64) then try mamba. On Windows, PartCAD must be used inside a conda environment.

Note

On Ubuntu, try apt install libcairo2-dev if pip install fails to install cairo.

The commands and options supported by PartCAD CLI:

$ pc help
usage: pc [-h] [-v] [--no-ansi] [-p CONFIG_PATH] {add,add-part,add-assembly,init,info,install,update,list,list-all,list-parts,list-assemblies,render,inspect,status} ...

PartCAD command line tool

positional arguments:
  {add,add-part,add-assembly,init,info,install,update,list,list-all,list-parts,list-assemblies,render,inspect,status}
    add                 Import a package
    add-part            Add a part
    add-assembly        Add an assembly
    init                Initialize a new PartCAD package in this directory
    info                Show detailed info on a part, assembly or scene
    install             Download and prepare all imported packages
    update              Update all imported packages
    list                List imported packages
    list-all            List available parts, assemblies and scenes
    list-parts          List available parts
    list-assemblies     List available assemblies
    render              Render the selected or all parts, assemblies and scenes in this package
    inspect             Visualize a part, assembly or scene
    status              Display the state of internal data used by PartCAD

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v                    Increase the level of verbosity
  --no-ansi             Plain logging output. Do not use colors or animations.
  -p CONFIG_PATH        Package path (a YAML file or a directory with 'partcad.yaml')

Python module

PartCAD provides Python modules that can be used in CAD as code scripts (such as CadQuery and build123d). It’s a dependency of partcad-cli so it doesn’t usually need to be installed separately.

$ python -m pip install -U partcad
$ python
...
>>> import partcad as pc
>>> ctx = pc.init()

Visual Studio Code extension

This extension is available through the VS Code marketplace. The corresponding marketplace page is here.

Public PartCAD repository

The public PartCAD repository is hosted at GitHub. If necessary, PartCAD tools are automatically retrieving the contents of this repository and all other required repositories and packages. No manual action is needed is need to install it.

However, if you suspect that something is wrong with locally cached files, use pc status to investigate and to determine the location of the cached files.