cadcraft/docs/gaps.md

Where CADCraft falls short of AutoCAD

Last reviewed: 2026-10-10 · Last updated: 2026-10-12 · Change: trivial (F13: HATCHEDIT refuses a bad scale or angle before editing (#724); previously minor: SCRIPT command reading .scr files landed; E2 removed) · Target: Autodesk AutoCAD 2027

Every known shortfall, one row each, ranked within each section by user impact. This is the work list: agents pick from here (top of a section first), and remove or update a row in the same PR that closes it. Numbers and weights live in target-app-parity.md; hours are Opus 5.5 agent-hours, calibrated as explained there. "Est." means a judgement from the cited evidence. Rows marked [alpha blocker] are what fails the alpha gate; do them first.

Top 10 across everything

#	Gap	Why it ranks here	Est.	Doc
1	[alpha blocker] Saving DWG drops what we don't model (DXF now writes back unknown entities and objects, foreign xdata, extension dictionaries, reactors, layer states and colour books, #528, and native MULTILEADERs, #459 (not yet tested through DWG); through DWG, acadrust drops custom-class entities and objects, xdata on table records and blocks, entity colour books and reactors)	Opening a colleague's DWG and saving it still deletes some content: the one thing a CAD user can't forgive	6–10	file formats
2	[alpha blocker] No real-file test corpus and no check in AutoCAD	All 36 file tests are synthetic; nobody has verified a CADCraft DWG/DXF opens cleanly in AutoCAD	10–15 + human	file formats
3	Ellipse and spline geometry is tessellated (intersections, offsets, closest points; polyline offset ignores bulges)	Coordinates are subtly wrong; offsets of ellipses come out as polylines	30–50	geometry
4	[alpha blocker] No block editor or dynamic blocks; xrefs can't be edited in place or clipped (xrefs, #525, and groups, #417, landed)	Most production drawings use them	65–100	features
5	No autosave in the web build (the desktop app has SAVETIME autosave, Drawing Recovery, AUDIT and RECOVER since #406)	Browser users lose unsaved work when the tab or the browser goes down	3–5	features
6	No CI runs the Rust tests on pull requests (cargo fmt on main is fixed)	open PRs land without a gate; regressions go unseen	2–3	stability

Features

#	Gap	Evidence	User impact	Est.
F1	[alpha blocker] Prompt options that still print "not available yet": -ATTEDIT one-at-a-time Position, Height, Angle and Style, colour books in -ATTEDIT Color, -RENAME of materials, plot styles and viewport configurations. SPLINEDIT Join, Edit vertex Add and Elevate order (#559), PEDIT Edit vertex and the other SPLINEDIT options (#558) done: Edit vertex Tangent directions last for the PEDIT session only (LWPOLYLINE stores none). MTEXT Dynamic/Static columns done (#547). SPLINE, MTEXT and MLEADER options done (#408): SPLINE Object fits the polyline's vertices (no spline frame is kept) (STRETCH polygon, CP and WP, and fence selection done; TRIM/EXTEND, PLINE arc mode and Length, XLINE done (#397); OFFSET, ROTATE and FILLET options done earlier)	cmd/blocks/attedit.rs, cmd/props/rename.rs	Low: the most-used commands are done	1–3
F2	XREF editing in place and clipping: XCLIP is missing. REFEDIT, REFSET and REFCLOSE edit a block reference in place (working set, faded rest of the block, everything else locked, save or discard; #813); left: editing an xref in place (its source drawing is not written back; XOPEN opens it), picking nested references, a dimmed look for the locked drawing and a banner with Save and Discard, attribute sync of other references (ATTSYNC). XATTACH, the External References palette, -XREF (Bind/Detach/Path/Unload/Reload/Overlay), XBIND, XOPEN, overlays, relative paths and loading at open are done (#525). Unloaded state and xref-layer overrides last only for the session	cmd/blocks/xref.rs	Medium: xrefs can't be edited in place or clipped	15–25
F3	[alpha blocker] (block editor and REFEDIT; dynamic-block authoring is beta) No block editor (BEDIT) or dynamic blocks (parameters, actions, visibility, lookup); dynamic blocks from other files lose their behaviour	issue #185 offers help	High: standard libraries are dynamic	50–75
F4	Autosave leftovers: no autosave in the web build (browser storage); autosave files are DXF, not DWG; no AUDITCTL .adt log and no separate RECOVER mode in the file readers (SAVETIME, Drawing Recovery, AUDIT and RECOVER landed with #406)	engine/src/autosave.rs, engine/src/audit.rs	Low-medium (web users)	3–5
F5	Associative arrays (ASsociative, Levels, polar ROWs, ARRAYEDIT, ARRAYCLOSE) landed (#448); left: grip editing of arrays (count/spacing grips), ARRAYPATH is not associative, ARRAYEDIT has no item deletion (CTRL+click) and no Key point base points, levels only shift Z (no 3D view)	cmd/array.rs, cmd/array/edit.rs	Medium	4–6
F7	Dimensions: no DIMSTYLE manager dialog; no smart DIM; DIMTFILL/DIMTFILLCLR, DIMALTTD/DIMALTTZ, DIMUPT and DIMTXTDIRECTION not modelled; jog height and break size not style settings; DIMBREAK breaks don't follow moved objects (style variables, DIMJOGGED, DIMJOGLINE, DIMBREAK, DIMEDIT, DIMINSPECT and QDIM modes done, #507)	doc/src/tables.rs, cmd/annotate_dimedit.rs, cmd/annotate_qdim.rs	Medium	10–15
F8	TOLERANCE leftovers (feature control frames landed, #420: model, our own symbol drawing, DXF, command-line prompts, explode, grips): no Geometric Tolerance dialog, no LEADER/QLEADER tolerance annotation, no in-place editing of a frame's contents	cmd/tolerance.rs	Low-medium (mechanical)	2–4
F9	MTEXT is edited in a dialog box, not in place (no ruler for indents and tabs, no formatting toolbar on the canvas); no fields (FIELD, UPDATEFIELD) and no spell check (SPELL): open PR #551. Paragraph indents, tabs, bullets, numbering and columns landed (#547)	ui-egui/dialogs.rs	Medium	15–25
F10	MLEADEREDIT (add/remove leader), MLEADERALIGN and MLEADERCOLLECT landed, but a multileader has one landing and one block (a collection keeps the other blocks as block references beside it; MLEADERALIGN has no Options-menu preview); MLEADERSTYLE has 5 fields (block content and spline/no-leader types are per command, not in the style; block content has no attributes)	annotate.rs, cmd/mleader_content.rs, tables.rs:417	Medium	8–12
F11	Tables (cell styles, formulas, TABLEDIT, TABLEEXPORT, table breaking and CSV data links landed, #534): formulas aren't read from or written as AutoCAD FIELD objects (other programs see values); number formats apply to formula results only; cell text doesn't wrap; custom cell styles, breaks and data links travel as CADCraft xdata (not through DWG); data links read CSV only (no Excel ranges, no write-back, not on the web); no cell-style tab in the Table Style dialog	cmd/table/*, io/dxf_table.rs	Low-medium	6–10
F12	Annotative scaling done (#468): scale list (SCALELISTEDIT), CANNOSCALE, OBJECTSCALE, ANNOALLVISIBLE/ANNOAUTOSCALE, viewport scale, DXF, status bar list. Left: per-scale positions (ANNORESET is a no-op), a viewport annotation scale apart from its viewport scale, annotative objects inside blocks and old LEADERs, AutoCAD files' per-object scale contexts (read as not annotative)	cmd/annoscale.rs, doc/src/anno.rs	Low-medium	4–8
F13	Hatch: 23 patterns (AutoCAD ~85; ours must stay original); the Hatch and Gradient and Hatch Edit dialogs have no Preview or Inherit Properties and can't add or remove boundaries of an existing hatch (HPDLGMODE 0 keeps HATCH on the command line), no MPolygon; HATCHEDIT can't add or remove boundaries; a hatch copied with its boundary isn't linked to the copy; HPGAPTOL closes gaps between curve ends only	doc/src/library.rs, cmd/hatch.rs, cmd/hatch/edit.rs	Medium	8–12
F13	Hatch: 23 patterns (AutoCAD ~85; ours must stay original); no hatch dialog (HATCH and HATCHEDIT options work at the command line and in JSON; HATCHEDIT refuses a bad scale or angle before editing, #724), no MPolygon; HATCHEDIT can't add or remove boundaries; a hatch copied with its boundary isn't linked to the copy; HPGAPTOL closes gaps between curve ends only	doc/src/library.rs, cmd/hatch.rs, cmd/hatch/edit.rs	Medium	8–12
F14	[alpha blocker] Plotting leftovers: binary .ctb/.stb/.pc3 files can't be read; model-space PDF plots keep the default margins (a device paper's margins apply to layouts and PNG plots); no system printers (H3). The Plot dialog (#160), Plot Preview and PUBLISH (#186), plot styles (CTB and STB, plot-styles.md, #410) with their end, join and fill styles, and plotter devices with paper sizes and printable areas (plotters.md, #564) landed	io/src/plotter.rs, cmd/plotters.rs	Medium	4–8
F15	Viewports: MVIEW Restore prints "not available yet" (named viewport configurations into a layout, see U11); a clipped viewport and its clip boundary move and scale separately. Polygonal, object and clipped viewports, VPCLIP, MVIEW ON/OFF/Lock/2/3/4 and the status-bar scale list landed (#453)	cmd/layout/viewports.rs	Low	2–4
F16	Groups: no group bounding box or single grip when a group is selected (GROUPDISPLAYMODE), copying a whole group does not make a new group, no Object Grouping dialog (GROUP, GROUPEDIT, UNGROUP, -GROUP, PICKSTYLE group selection and the DXF/DWG round trip landed, #417); PICKSTYLE's associative-hatch bit is stored but unused	cmd/groups.rs	Low	2–4
F17	Attributes (ATTSYNC, global -ATTEDIT, BATTMAN editing and DATAEXTRACTION/EATTEXT landed, #433): no verify, preset, lock-position or multiple-lines modes, so BATTMAN can't set them; data extraction covers block references and attribute values (CSV or a table) only — no wizard, nested blocks, other objects' properties, .dxe templates or spreadsheet output	cmd/blocks/battman.rs, cmd/blocks/extract.rs	Low	4–6
F19	MATCHPROP Settings is a keyword prompt (no dialog) and has no material, shadow or centre-object settings; TEXTTOFRONT and HATCHTOBACK act on the current space only; OVERKILL doesn't compare polyline segments with other objects (picker and Settings, DRAWORDER Above/Under, TEXTTOFRONT, HATCHTOBACK, OVERKILL tolerance/ignore/overlap/end-to-end options landed, #439)	props/matchprop.rs, draworder.rs, overkill.rs	Low	2–4
F20	OPTIONS dialog done (#23): Display, Open and Save, Drafting, Selection, User Preferences and Profiles tabs, and the user profile (object snap modes, drafting toggles, Dynamic Input, PICKBOX, APERTURE, GRIPSIZE, CURSORSIZE, PICKFIRST, PICKADD, QPMODE, model and paper background, snap marker size, system cursor) survives restarts. Left: right-click customization, the autosave interval and default save version on Open and Save (the features themselves landed, #406, #421), AutoSnap magnet and tooltip toggles, colours of the other drawing-area elements, named profiles with import and export	ui-egui/src/options/	Low	2–4
F21	MLINE, REGION and HELIX are objects since #510, with gaps: MLEDIT has no Merged Tee and tees trim square; UNION/SUBTRACT/INTERSECT only combine regions whose boundaries don't meet; regions are saved as closed polylines (no ACIS data); PURGE skips multiline styles	draw2/mline.rs, inquiry/regions.rs, dxf_region.rs	Low	6–10
F22	Inquiry leftovers (COUNT across spaces and nested blocks, the QuickCalc palette and COMPARE landed, #563; MASSPROP on regions, #510): COMPARE compares the tab shown, not every layout at once, and has no COMPAREEXPORT report; QuickCalc keeps its history and variables for the session only	file/compare.rs, palettes/quickcalc.rs	Low	3–5
F23	No Sheet Set Manager, eTransmit, Share, Traces, Markup Import, Activity Insights	menu items uncovered	Low-medium (team workflows)	40–70
F24	No 3D: UCS, 3D views, orbit, solids, surfaces, meshes, sections, visual styles, materials, lights, rendering (150 menu items)	parity-checklist	Medium (3D users)	300–450

UI/UX

Detail and evidence: ui-parity.md.

#	Gap	User impact	Est.
U4	Tab snap cycling offers the closest snap of each mode, not every candidate. Typed snap overrides (END, MID … NON), the Shift/Ctrl+right-click snap menu and Tab cycling landed (#393), the menu's Temporary track point in #441	Low	1
U5	Grip menus open on right-click only (no hover menu, no Ctrl to cycle the options); no multifunctional grips on dimensions, MLEADER, hatches or text; Add Vertex on an arc segment straightens it. Hot-grip options (Base point, Copy, Undo, Reference, eXit), multiple hot grips and the polyline/line/arc grip menus landed (#425)	Low-medium	2–4
U6	Selection: lasso; selection cycling (a list of overlapping objects, SELECTIONCYCLING); the CLass keyword; isolation saved with the drawing (OBJECTISOLATIONMODE 1) and the status-bar isolate button. Press-drag windows (#63), the W, C, F, WP and CP keywords (#226), BOX, AUto, SIngle, Multiple, Group, Add, Remove and Undo, SELECTSIMILAR, and ISOLATEOBJECTS/HIDEOBJECTS/UNISOLATEOBJECTS (#428) landed	Medium	3–5
U7	Right-click menus: no in-place layout tab rename or Move or Copy dialog, no Select All Layouts, no Paste to command line; palette menus are on the Layers rows and the Properties background only. The command menu (held right-click: Enter, Cancel, Recent Input, options, Snap Overrides, Pan/Zoom), the selection menu with object edits, command line, drawing tab, layout tab and palette menus landed (#512)	Low	1–2
U10	SETVAR covers about 150 of ~1,000 variables (UNDO options, MREDO and UNDOCTL, and header variables such as CIRCLERAD, OFFSETDIST, POLYSIDES, HPNAME and the dimension variables in SETVAR ? landed, #461; typing a bare variable name as a command runs SETVAR on it)	Low-medium	3–5
U11	MVIEW Restore (a saved viewport configuration into a layout); VIEW Orthographic, UCS and background settings; view twist is kept but not shown (Zoom Realtime and Dynamic, ZOOMFACTOR, named views (VIEW) and tiled model viewports with saved configurations (VPORTS) landed in #463)	Low	1–2
U12	Workspaces, navigation bar, CUI customisation, alias editor, ViewCube drag (#7)	Low-medium	15–25
U13	.dxf from Finder fails to open on macOS (#158) (window controls fixed, #161)	Medium	1–2

File formats

Detail: file-format-parity.md.

#	Gap	User impact	Est.
FF1	[alpha blocker] Round-trip what we don't model. DXF done (#528): unknown entities and objects (with their CLASS records), foreign xdata (hyperlinks included), extension dictionaries, persistent reactors, DICTIONARYVAR and XRECORDs, layer states, colour book colours, references remapped on save; IMAGE, VIEW/UCS, groups, block descriptions, true colours, transparency (#201, #204, #208, #209, #213, #223); WIPEOUT and gradients (#147, #162). Left: through DWG, acadrust drops custom-class entities and objects, xdata on table records and blocks, entity colour book names and reactors; UCS elevation; MTEXT background colours; unknown entities follow only layer edits, and renamed layers and blocks lose their foreign data	High	6–10
FF2	Multileader leftovers (native MULTILEADER read/write landed, #459): several landings per multileader (extra leader roots are folded into the lines), per-object overrides (leader colour and linetype, arrowhead symbol, text frame), annotative scale contexts; check the text placement of our MULTILEADER output in AutoCAD	Medium	3–5
FF3	Save-version leftovers (DXF/DWG 2000–2018, binary DXF, SAVEAS version/binary and the default save version landed, #421): no R14 DWG or R12 DXF output; the Save dialog can't pick the version per file (the file picker doesn't report the chosen type; File > Default Save Format sets it); no command-line SAVEAS format prompt	Low	2–4
FF4	Code-page leftovers (pre-2007 DXF read in their $DWGCODEPAGE landed, #505): Johab (ANSI_1361) and DOS 855/857/860–865/869 read as ANSI_1252; saving declares ANSI_1252 instead of the file's code page (the text is pure ASCII, so still correct); acadrust approximates DOS code pages in pre-2007 DWG (DOS437 as 866, DOS850 as 1252)	Low	1–2
FF5	[alpha blocker] Real-file corpus (storytold/cadcraft-corpus), open → save → reopen tests, black-box check in AutoCAD	High	10–15 + human
FF6	[alpha blocker] DWG throughput: a 10 MB DWG took ~2 min to fail (#57)	High for real projects	6–10
FF7	Table record and object handles from other programs' files are renumbered on the first save (entity handles are kept; *D blocks no longer duplicate and once reopened, CADCraft's own files keep every handle across saves, #495)	Low	4–6
FF8	SHX fonts (shape and big fonts) not read	Medium-high (text metrics differ)	8–12
FF9	.pc3 plotter configuration files; linetype shape (SHX) elements are skipped (templates and .dwt, user .lin/.pat and .pgp alias files landed, #552; .ctb/.stb, #410)	Low-medium	5–10
FF10	PDF import and underlays (PDFATTACH); raster image attach (IMAGEATTACH). PDF export has real text in embedded TrueType subsets, PDF layers, several sheets per file and hyperlinks (#567, #571)	Medium	20–35
FF11	DWF/DWFx, DGN, WMF, EPS, ACIS/STL and other exchange formats	Low-medium	50–100
FF12	DWG in the web build	Medium	6–10
FF13	R12 binary DXF, pre-R13 DWG	Low	10–20
FF14	SVG import leftovers (shapes, paths, groups and Inkscape layers landed, #636): no CSS classes (<style>), use references, fills and gradients, text or embedded images; rounded rectangle corners (rx/ry) are ignored	Low-medium	2–4

Hardware

Detail: hardware-parity.md.

#	Gap	Est.
H1	3Dconnexion SpaceMouse (needs the device and 3D views)	6–10 + human
H2	Multi-monitor: floating palettes on other screens, per-monitor DPI (PR #110 for Windows 11 DPI)	4–6
H3	Plotters and system printers (PC3 devices) beyond PDF files	6–10
H4	Pen tablets / digitizer (TABLET)	3–5 + human
H5	Screen magnifier tracking (#39, PR #187)	1–2

Localization

Detail: localization-parity.md.

#	Gap	Est.
L1	Catalog covers the UI (989 rows, #36) but not engine diagnostics, CLI/MCP replies or command history	4–6
L2	AutoCAD for Mac's other languages (zh-Hans, es, fr, ja, ko, it; de landed 2026-10-11) plus pt, hi, ar, id, vi from the standard's list	35–55 + native review
L3	Complex-script shaping for Devanagari and other Indic scripts in drawing text; RTL (mirrored) UI. Arabic-script shaping and bidi in drawing text landed (#287)	20–30
L4	IME fixes on every platform (PRs #110–#119); vertical text styles	6–10

Stability

#	Gap	Evidence	Est.
S1	No CI runs cargo xtask ci on pull requests (only packaging lint and release builds)	.github/workflows/	2–3
S2	cargo fmt --check fails on main fixed on main (8fceaaf)	—	0
S3	40 open PRs, many community bug fixes awaiting review	gh pr list	10–20
S4	Open correctness issues: extents union far-apart geometry (#166), lines not visible mid-command (#44), browser plot shows raw PDF bytes (#134) (closing a tab and browser saves fixed, #76, #133)	issues	4–6
S5	No smoke test of every command through the UI (PR #42 proposes one)	—	6–10

Platforms

#	Gap	Est.
P1	Web build: plot shows raw PDF bytes (#134), no DWG (File > Open and save downloads fixed, #55, #133)	3–5
P2	Windows and Linux get little runtime testing; Linux Mint mouse delay (#25); Windows magnifier (#39)	6–10
P3	macOS file associations: opening .dxf from Finder fails (#158)	1–2

Ecosystem and automation

#	Gap	Est.
E1	AutoLISP beyond the core (#758 landed the language, command, entity lists, selection sets, get… input, APPLOAD, (load), c: commands and acad.lsp/acaddoc.lsp at startup): Visual LISP ActiveX (vlax-, vla-), DCL dialogs, reactors, an APPLOAD dialog with a Startup Suite, UCS-aware trans	30–50
E3	Express Tools equivalents (TXT2MTXT, BREAKLINE, BURST, NCOPY exists, SUPERHATCH, Move/Copy/Rotate)	30–50
E4	Plug-in API (owner decision: Rust/WASM plug-ins rather than ObjectARX/.NET)	30–50
E5	CUI customisation and alias (.pgp) editor	15–25

AI features

#	Gap	Est.
A1	Smart Blocks equivalents (placement suggestions, replace, detect and convert, search), using local open models	25–50 + model licensing
A2	An in-app assistant (AutoCAD has Autodesk Assistant); CADCraft's MCP server already lets any agent drive it	10–20
A3	Markup Assist (import markups from PDFs/images)	10–20

Revision history

Date	Change	Summary
2026-10-12	minor	Hatch and Gradient dialog (HATCH, GRADIENT; HPDLGMODE) and Hatch Edit dialog (HATCHEDIT, right-click, double-click a hatch): F13 narrowed to Preview, Inherit Properties and boundary add/remove in edit mode
2026-10-12	minor	A bare system variable name typed at the command line (ORTHOMODE, GRIDMODE…) runs SETVAR on that variable, as in AutoCAD; U10 narrowed
2026-10-13	minor	STRETCH takes crossing and window polygons (CP, WP), BOX and a fence (F), typed and as JSON (polygon, fence): F1 narrowed
2026-10-12	minor	Property-based and hostile-input tests for geometry numerics landed (deterministic xorshift generator, no new dependency; known answers at 1e6–1e7 coordinates): S6 removed
2026-10-12	trivial	F13: HATCHEDIT refuses a bad scale or angle before editing (#724)
2026-10-12	minor	F3: dynamic block references show their grips (distance arrows, position squares, visibility/lookup lists, per visibility state) and drag them (blocks.reference.grips, blocks.reference.grip)
2026-10-12	minor	SCRIPT command reading .scr files landed (runs a file through the same script engine as CLI/MCP; nested scripts refused): E2 removed
2026-10-11	minor	Refreshed for merged features: code pages (#505), tracking leftovers (#441), dynamic input/grip input (#519, #425) and SPLINEDIT Join/Add/Elevate (#559) closed their top-10 rows (top 10 now has 6 rows until the next review re-ranks); MULTILEADER (#459) and xrefs (#525) narrowed rows 1 and 4; F1 narrowed to the remaining stubs (#558, #559, #547); F5, F7, F9, F12, F14, F15, F17, F20, F22, U5, U7, U10, FF2, FF4, FF10 narrowed; F18, U2, U8, U9 removed (done); U13, S3, S4, P1 updated for merged fixes
2026-10-11	minor	German interface catalog landed: L1 row count 936 → 989, L2 narrowed (de done; 40–60 → 35–55 h)
2026-10-11	minor	SPLINE Knots/Tangency/toLerance/Object, MTEXT Height/Justify/Line spacing/Rotation/Style/Width/Columns, MLEADER spline and no-leader types and block content landed (#408): top-10 row 5, F1 and F10 narrowed
2026-10-11	minor	Object snap tracking, Extension, Parallel and true Apparent Intersection landed (#379): top-10 row 3 and U1 narrowed to the leftovers
2026-10-10	minor	Merged main: closed or narrowed rows for the Ukrainian catalog, UNITS dialog, shortcut display, dynamic input pointer boxes, press-drag windows, SETVAR DIM*, WIPEOUT and gradients, fmt
2026-10-10	minor	Alpha blockers marked (rows failing the core-workflow gate)
2026-10-10	major	First gaps list: ranked top 10 and every known shortfall by dimension, with evidence and estimates