CadTools, free 3D and surface utility for AutoCad

Design your civil work in real 3D with this handy tool!

Latest update: 2010-01-17 Build 559

CadTools (ToolBox) is developed for Civil Engineers using AutoCAD. There are a number of great software on the market supporting the design process of roads, rails etc. For minor design work CadTools can be very useful, it contains more than 50 commands mostly in real 3D to support your work. By combining separate commands through the work process you can achieve almost anything you want. When I developed the commands I certainly had some situations in mind but every command can be used in a variety of situations not only in civil work design. With CadTools you can create your own surface models based on objects in the drawing or import triangles from DWG (other civil software). You can create profiles and cross-sections of multiple surfaces, calculate volumes and plot contours. It's easy and fun creating real 3D models with CadTools commands, some of these commands can only be found in software that you have to pay money for. I work as a civil designer at Tyréns, one of Sweden's leading consulting companies in the urban development sector. My main tool for civil design is Bentley InRoads/RailTrack, one of the best software I've seen. I use Inroads on AutoCAD and find that combination suitable for me. Sometimes you need something less complicated so I started developing CadTools on my laptop while traveling to work by train. After more than three years of developing this software now is a powerful tool way beyond my first intentions. Honestly I can't be without it, hope you will feel the same. CadTools is an out of process software and supports AutoCAD versions: 2001-2010. (vanilla and verticals i.e. Civil 3D)

Create surface cross-sections as 2D or 3D. Display crossing reference lines
Surface Contours

View Surface slope and direction. Easily detect flat areas. Perimeter of areas with userdefined slopes.	Create real 3D cut and fill by applying end-conditions to 3Dpolylines. Very simple and powerful step by step process.
Create Give Way	Create Chevrons

Reference Manual (ca 2,1 Mb) (PDF document, printed documentation 96 pages, updated 2010-01-17)


CadTools Forum

If you find it useful, why not donate and get full access to all commands!

Please note that donation notifications are sent to me from PayPal by email and I manually send you a registration email as soon as possible.
Generally i respond at least twice a day. If you haven't recived a responding email in a couple of days, check your spam filter or post a message to me in CadTools forum.

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Revision history

Latest update (2010-01-17 Build 559)
Fixed minor bugs and added rownumbers to CadTools SpreadSheet. Extended "Draw from Coordinates" with a command to draw text at polyline station and offset. Added new command for registered users; "Text and Block Station/Offset from Polyline to Excel", a command that process multiple block or text objects in a drawing. Result contains information of blocknamne or text string, station and offset from selected polyline. This command can be found in "Miscellaneous"

(2010-01-11) Fixed bug in export polyline coordinates to SpreadSheet

(2010-01-09) Added a solution for users that don't have Excel installed. All "Export to Excel" can now be targeted to a internal SpreadSheet window an then copied to Windows clipboard.
Extended "Layer Freeze by object" with some missing functionality. Fixed Simplify 3Dpolylines, closed polylines didn't work.

(2009-11-09) Fixed bug in "Insert Line-aligned text", using the command on 3D polylines didn't work as expected.

(2009-11-09) Added column for block rotation in "Draw from Coordinates". This extra column makes it possible to use a time saving procedure for inserting block at start and endpoints of hundreds of polylines. The procedure is described in CadTools forum (Tips and Tricks section)

(2009-11-01) Drag'n drop surface files from Explorer to CadTools is now supported. Added a new button for scaled length and annotation in one step (Slope Mode).
"Draw from Coordinates", "Block at Station/Offset from polyline" now support 3D-polylines (how could I miss that?). Also added a setting for Block elevation relative polyline elevation in the same command.
In the settings user can set a folder for reports and temporary files. This can solve problems with read and write access under Vista.

(2009-10-15) Minimize property for all forms. Region area to Excel (miscellaneous). 3DSolid volume to Excel (miscellaneous). Rotate annotation for respond label (Mode Slope), rotation angle is found in settings.

(2009-10-01 Build 547)
Now you can use settings for decimals in Surface cross Sections (settings)

(2009-09-28 Build 545)
Automatically refresh surface commands if a included surface has been modified since loaded. Redesigned the "Transverse 3D-lines" command and added option for elevation difference. Added annotation rotation to the "Stationing" command. Fixed another bug in "Stationing" (lines with many short vertices was rejected)

Position marker option for the "Table Edit polyline" command.

(2009-09-06 Build 532)
Fixed bug in "Stationing", turned off support for polylines with arcs in "remove duplicate points"

(2009-09-03 Build 531)
Added text rotation to "Draw from coordinates"

(2009-09-03 Build 530)
Fixed a bug in "Place Sloped text", added rotation and layer name to "Export text to Excel"

(2009-08-16 Build 529)
Added vertical text with layer name for reference lines in Cross-sections, great for annotation of borders n cross-sections. Added "Line start at:" in the Draw from coordinates, block at station. Useful if alignment station is other than zero.
Updated reference manual!

(2009-07-28 Build 528)
Fixed a bug in the "Place sloped text", problem due localization (decimal separator)

(2009-07-28 Build 527)
Fixed a bug in the Create 3D alignment (Surface profile). If user picked left vertical frame as elevation reference the resulting 3D line (alignment) was wrong. Similar command in the Profile polyline worked fine.

(2009-07-24 Build 525)
Fixed a bug in the Join 3Dpolyline command. Changed behavior of the "Create 3D alignment" now you get a question if you want to keep the unprofiled line in the drawing or replace it with the profiled line. Changed the triangulation command to create better triangulations, the breakline part has been rewritten and seems to work more stable now. Added support for booth 3Dpolylines, polylines and lines in the "Multi offset command"

(2009-07-10 Build 524)
The Trickle and Trickle All command (Edit/View surface, Tools) wasn't doing the job correct, sometimes the trace path stopped. This has been corrected in this update. I was testing some refinement for the triangulate algorithm and discovered that sometimes the algorithm could result in overlapping triangles, this is corrected in the update (no refinement is implemented). Added "Zoom to Surface View" in the "Edit/View" command, located under "Surface". This zooms AutoCAD's window to fit the loaded surface boundaries.

(2009-06-30 Build 520)
Added new command. Under Miscellaneous you find a "Dist" command for horizontal length and slope that can be used with Autocad's snap on. Fixed a bug in the "Table edit polyline". Added "Northing/Easting" in column headers in the "Draw from coordinates" command.

(2009-06-19 Build 514)
Made som enhancements to constrained triangulation. Fixed problems with "Create longitudinal features" in surfaces with holes. Added option to simplify (weed) longitudinal fetures.

(2009-06-13 Build 511)
New command for calculating Cut and Fill and component areas in cross sections. The command work for all kinds of cross sections not only those generated by CadTools and it will manage exaggerated scales. The result can be annotated as a table of points containing offset and elevation and a cut and fill area. The table can be useful as input in other software (Pizer EARTH's Cut & Fill Calculator)

Surface profiles now support crossing lines similar to the cross-section "Display references". The profile plot can be annotated with major and minor ticks and labels, you can annotate surface elevation for minor stations. A nice feature is displaying projected lines in the profile, you pick 3D polylines in the drawing and then CadTools displays it as a projection. This can be useful in many cases, as an example you could offset a couple of lines from the profile and drape them on the surface and finally display them as projected reference lines. By this you can get information of the surface elevation at any offset from the profile line.

New command, "Export Hatch area to Excel" useful for quantity calculations
New command, "Place sloped text" makes it easy to place elevation text based on a basepoint and a slope.