Every feature in PencilCAD

Two toolbars

Settings → Tools switches the toolbar between Sketch and CAD. Your pages look the same either way, and you can switch whenever you like.

• Sketch

  Pen, marker, pencil, highlighter, eraser, lasso and ruler, with drag-to-fill shading.

• CAD

  Select, Line, Measure, Shape, Modify, Constrain, Text and Layers, plus the pen and eraser for notes.

• Hold to make lines

  Turn it on in Settings → Tools, and a scribble you hold still at the end becomes clean lines, arcs or a circle.

Sketching

The scratch-paper side of PencilCAD: open it and draw.

• Pen, marker and pencil

  Crisp opaque ink, a broad translucent marker and soft graphite, in black, blue, red or any colour you pick.

• Highlighter

  Translucent amber, for marking up a drawing without covering it.

• Eraser

  Erases ink, shapes and fills.

• Lasso

  Circle ink to move, copy or delete it.

• Ruler

  A straightedge on the page. Strokes follow its edge.

• Drag to fill

  Drag the ink swatch onto a closed face and it fills to your lines, closing small gaps at the corners.

Lines and shapes

Everything you draw with the CAD tools stays editable.

• Line

  Drag a straight segment. Its ends snap, weld onto corners, and joined lines move together.

• Shapes

  Boxes, circles, ellipses, arcs and curves. Sketch a curve roughly and it’s cleaned up when you lift.

• Edit by dragging

  Drag a corner, an end or a handle. Lines joined to it follow, and their dimensions update.

• Exact sizes

  Tap a dimension’s label to type a length. With a keyboard, type the size while you drag, such as 80,40, then Return.

• Text

  Tap the paper to add a label for a part name, a material or a note.

• Barrel roll

  With Apple Pencil Pro, roll the Pencil to turn the box or ellipse you’re drawing.

Snaps

Lines and shapes land where you mean them to.

• Grid

  With Snap to grid on, ends land on isometric, square or dot grid points.

• Points

  Ends, midpoints, centres, quadrants, intersections and points on a curve.

• Directions

  Polar angles, and tangent, perpendicular or parallel to what’s already there.

• Hover preview

  On iPads with Pencil hover, the snap a press will land on shows before the tip touches.

Dimensions and units

Sizes are part of the drawing, not ink on top of it.

• Measure

  Drag point to point for a dimension with witness ticks and end marks, labelled with its length.

• True isometric lengths

  On isometric paper, a dimension along an axis reads the length it stands for, not its length on screen.

• Radius and diameter

  Dimension a circle or an arc as R or ⌀.

• Units

  Millimetres, centimetres, metres, inches to 1/8, 1/16 or 1/32, decimal inches, or feet and inches.

• Page scale

  Set the page’s scale once and every dimension on it relabels to match.

• Not to scale

  Type a value the line doesn’t measure and its label is underlined, as on a paper drawing.

Constraints

Make a sketch exact without leaving the Pencil.

• Write a size

  In the Constrain tool, write 120, 3 1/2, 2′6″, R20, ⌀40 or 45° by a line, a circle or two lines. It becomes a driving dimension.

• Draw a mark

  Ticks for equal, arrows for parallel, a corner box for square, and a loop around two ends to join them.

• Thirteen constraints

  Coincident, horizontal, vertical, parallel, perpendicular, tangent, equal, concentric, midpoint, symmetric, on, angle and fix.

• Finish

  Adds the sizes and constraints a sketch is missing, at the sizes it has now, so nothing moves.

• Fully defined

  A fully defined sketch turns green. Press a point to see the way it can still move.

• Clash cards

  When a new constraint fights one you have, a card names it and offers to replace it in one undo step.

Modify, select and layers

The editing tools that turn a sketch into a drawing.

• Trim and extend

  Tap or drag across an outline to cut it back to the crossings, or extend a line to meet the next one.

• Fillet, chamfer, offset

  Round or bevel a corner to a size, or copy an outline at a set distance.

• Select

  Tap shapes or drag a box around them, then move, duplicate, rotate, mirror or scale them.

• Arrays

  Repeat a selection along a line or around a centre.

• Copy and paste

  Shapes copy with their dimensions and constraints, and paste onto any page.

• Layers

  Up to 10 layers a page. Show, hide or lock each one, and pick the one you draw on.

Import

More → Import… brings in what you want to trace or build on.

• Photos and scans

  A photo, a document scan or an image from Files, or drag a picture onto the page or paste it.

• PDF plans

  Pick the page of a PDF you want to trace.

• Underlay

  Images and PDFs sit under the drawing at 50% on a locked layer, so you trace without moving them.

• Set its scale

  Tap two points on the underlay and type the distance between them.

• DXF and SVG

  Lines, arcs, circles, ellipses, splines and text come in as editable shapes at true size, with their layers and colours.

Export and share

Share a page from More, at the size you drew it.

• PDF to scale

  Fits one Letter or A4 sheet at a standard scale, with a check bar to measure with a ruler.

• SVG

  Sized in millimetres or inches, for laser cutters, Inkscape and Illustrator.

• DXF

  R2000, with layers and colours, for Fusion, Onshape, Shapr3D and other CAD apps.

• PNG

  A picture of the page for messages and notes.

Paper and pages

A pad of paper that never runs out of the kind you like.

• Six papers

  Isometric, dot grid, grid, lined, calligraphy and blank, in Small, Medium or Large.

• Big pages

  Each page is twice the screen each way. Zoom from the whole page to 8×.

• Up to 50 pages

  Swipe with two fingers to turn pages, and pull past the last one for a new sheet.

• Tear it out

  Hold two fingers on a page to tear it off. Undo on the page pill, or Settings → Restore last page, brings it back.

• Appearance

  Warm paper or a dark chalkboard, or follow the system. Bolder lines and a red margin are one switch each.

Apple Pencil

Made for the Pencil, down to the gestures.

• Hover

  With Line, Measure or Shape, see where a press will land. In Constrain, see what a tap will pick.

• Squeeze

  On Apple Pencil Pro, squeeze for a palette of your recent tools at the tip.

• Double-tap

  Switches to the eraser and back, or to your last tool, following the system setting.

• Handwriting, offline

  Numbers you write are read on the iPad. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Keyboard shortcuts

With a Magic Keyboard or any Bluetooth keyboard. Hold ⌘ to see them in the app.

iCloud and iPhone

Your pages, everywhere you have your Apple ID, with nothing to sign up for.

• iCloud sync

  Turn on Settings → iCloud → Sync with iCloud and pages sync through your own private iCloud database, page by page.

• Works offline

  Draw anywhere. Changes catch up the next time you’re online.

• iPhone viewer

  On iPhone, PencilCAD shows your synced pages to pan, zoom and share. Drawing happens on the iPad.

• Private

  No account. We never see your pages, and anonymous usage stats are one switch in Settings → Privacy.

Requirements