Drift user guide

Drift is a parametric 2D CAD sketcher. You draw lines, arcs and curves, then hold them in shape with relations (horizontal, tangent, equal…) and dimensions, as in a SolidWorks sketch. Change a dimension and the drawing follows. The same drawing then goes onto sheets with a title block and out as PDF, SVG or DXF.

It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and in the browser.

This guide is for 0.1.0-beta.1.2. It is written for architects, designers and engineers who already know a CAD or drawing program (Revit, AutoCAD, SolidWorks, Illustrator, Affinity) but have never used Drift.

Beta software. Save often. A file saved by a newer Drift won’t open in an older one, so everyone testing together should use the same build.

How the guide is organised

Start here

• Getting started: install Drift, find your way round the window, open the example, navigate, and save.
• Coming from another program: what maps to what if you know Revit, AutoCAD, SolidWorks or Illustrator.

Tutorials. Short projects, each with numbered steps. Do the first three in order; the rest stand alone.

1. Your first sketch: lines, rectangles, circles, snapping, typed sizes and axis locks.
2. Constraints and dimensions: relations, the Dimension tool, degrees of freedom and driven dimensions.
3. Parameters: variables, expressions and variants.
4. Editing: selecting, moving, rotating, scaling, trim, fillet, offset, mirror and groups.
5. Temporary dimensions: Revit-style sizing of a picked line.
6. Fills and hatches.
7. Blocks: furniture and symbols drawn once, placed many times.
8. Construction geometry.
9. Annotation: notes, callouts, marks and dimension text.
10. Sheets and output: views drawn on the canvas, sheets, scales, title blocks, PDF, SVG, DXF and printing.
11. Underlays and DXF import.
12. Checking a sketch: gaps, short ends and curves of no length.

Reference. One page per area, to look things up.

• Tools
• Panels
• Preferences
• Units and length formats
• Files and compatibility
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Drawing with AI assistants: connect Claude to Drift through its MCP server.

Conventions

• Names of buttons, menus and fields are in bold, as they appear in Drift.
• Keys are written as Ctrl+K, Shift+F, Alt+C. On a Mac, use Cmd for Ctrl and Option for Alt.
• Menu paths are written File → Open example.

About the screenshots

The screenshots are made by Drift’s own headless UI tests, so they can be brought up to date whenever the interface changes. From the repository root:

cargo test -p drift-app docs_screenshots -- --ignored

The scenes are staged in crates/drift-app/src/ui_tests/docs.rs and written to docs/guide/images/. The test is skipped when the computer has no graphics adapter.

Reporting problems

Use GitHub issues. Help → About Drift has a Copy details button with the version and system information to paste into a report.

Edit this page on GitHub