What's new in Drift

Highlights

• AI assistants in your open drawing. With Edit › Preferences › General › Let AI assistants edit the open drawing on, Claude and other assistants work through drift-mcp on the drawing in your Drift window.
  • You watch each change as it's made.
  • Each change is one undo step, labelled "Assistant: …".
  • You can keep drawing alongside it.
• Drift script. An assistant, or you, can describe a drawing by intent in one go. For example: rooms with walls, doors and windows placed in them, a grid, and hatches. The result is real, constrained geometry you can keep editing.
• Dimensions and notes for some views only. In the Inspector, Show › In views keeps a note or dimension to the views it belongs to, like a note meant only for a detail. It stays on the canvas.
• Project title blocks. File › Drawing settings › Project holds the project's name, number, client, address and company, shared by every sheet's title block. There's a new Architectural set of title block fields, and a Status per sheet (For review, For permit, For construction…).
• Steadier fillets. Dragging a filleted sketch no longer turns arcs inside out or thins its arms. A drag that can't keep the shape is refused instead.
• View crops at a keystroke. Shift+Alt+B shows or hides views' crops and names, and view crops now snap.
• The guide now describes Drift as beta throughout.

What's Changed

• Project-wide title block fields (format 30); view crops snap by @chrisplange in #49
• Dimensions and notes drawn in some views only (format 31) by @chrisplange in #50
• Add the live link: assistants edit the drawing open in Drift by @chrisplange in #51
• Website: Beta 1.1, and the site's address from SITE_URL by @chrisplange in #52
• Shift+Alt+B shows or hides view crops by @chrisplange in #53
• Keep filleted sketches in shape while dragging by @chrisplange in #54
• Drift script: intent-level drawing in one run_script call by @chrisplange in #55
• Website: the scroll drawing becomes a backdrop, ending on a rowhouse by @chrisplange in #56
• Drop the alphas from the docs: old-licence notes and alpha wording by @chrisplange in #57
• Version 0.1.0-beta.1.2 by @chrisplange in #58
• Website: What's new for Beta 1.2 by @chrisplange in #59

Full Changelog: v0.1.0-beta.1.1...v0.1.0-beta.1.2

Drift's first beta

Beta 1.1 is the first beta release, and the first under the Functional Source License 1.1 (FSL-1.1-ALv2). You may use, change and share Drift for anything except a competing product. Each version also becomes Apache-2.0 two years after release.

Highlights

• Views on the canvas, Revit-style.
  • Define views in the sketch as named crops, and show or hide their crops and names.
  • Place them on sheets. Reframing a view updates every sheet it's on.
  • Views have their own layer visibility.
  • Section and elevation marks link to their views, and read their view and sheet numbers ("1 / A-101"). Right-click a mark and choose Make view to create its view.
• Sheets.
  • Canvas tabs switch between Model and each sheet (A-101, A-102 and so on), with + for a new sheet.
  • On a sheet, the tool rail has sheet tools, and the Inspector edits the picked view or the sheet.
  • Add view lets you drag a view's crop in the model; it's placed on the sheet in free space, at a standard scale.
  • Sheets can be reordered and duplicated, and you can choose which go into a PDF.
  • New Colours setting for output: colour, greyscale, or black & white with fills in grey, as CAD's monochrome plot style. Saved per sheet; the sheet preview shows it.
• A new look. A polish pass over the theme, panels, menus, dialogs, icons and canvas overlays, with annotation style overrides.
• Draw with AI. drift-mcp is a new MCP server that lets AI assistants such as Claude create, constrain, render and check Drift drawings. See docs/ai.md to connect it.
• Fills and hatches follow their outlines through every edit, including moves, rotate, mirror, trim, fillet and undo.
• No more flash on startup when Drift's window was last left maximised.
• Third-party notices for the fonts and libraries Drift is built with now ship with it (About › Licences).

What's Changed

• Ship third-party notices for bundled fonts and crates by @chrisplange in #32
• Keep fills and hatches on their areas through every edit by @chrisplange in #33
• Print sheets in colour, greyscale or black & white by @chrisplange in #34
• License Drift under FSL-1.1-ALv2 by @chrisplange in #35
• Stop the window flashing when Drift starts maximised by @chrisplange in #36
• Add drift-mcp: an MCP server so AI assistants can draw in Drift by @chrisplange in #37
• UI polish: a consistent, quieter interface, and per-object annotation styles by @chrisplange in #38
• Views on the canvas: model views with crops, placed on sheets by @chrisplange in #40
• Sheets: canvas tabs, sheet tools, the Inspector on sheets, numbers, and Add view by @chrisplange in #41
• Add the Drift website (Astro, Cloudflare Pages, web app at /app) by @chrisplange in #42
• Views: per-view layer visibility (format 28) by @chrisplange in #43
• Sheets: reorder, duplicate, and choose the sheets for a PDF by @chrisplange in #44
• Marks linked to views (#45, brought to main) by @chrisplange in #48
• Version 0.1.0-beta.1.1 by @chrisplange in #46

Full Changelog: https://github.com/chrisplange/Drift/commits/v0.1.0-beta.1.1