Coming soon

Lince2D — 2D CAD for DWG and DXF drawings

Lince2D is a new 2D technical drawing program for Windows and Linux that opens, edits and saves DWG and DXF files directly, with the command line, ribbon and menus that desktop CAD users expect. Written in Rust from top to bottom. It is almost here: this page is the announcement; downloads will open right here.

Part of a suite of engineering software.

Downloads: coming soon See features

Lince2D window showing a dimensioned floor plan of a flat: hatched walls, doors, furniture from the block library and text. — Sample floor plan drawn with Lince2D: layers, hatches, blocks from the bundled library, dimensions and TrueType text.

Announcement · version 0.1.5-beta. Lince2D is in the final adjustments before release. When it is ready to download, we will announce it on this very page.

At a glance

DWG and DXF, no conversion

Opens DWG from R14 up to the 2018 format (still used by current AutoCAD releases) and DXF from R12. The drawing is not translated into a private format: whatever the program does not edit is kept on save.

Tested on real drawings

Every change to reading or writing is checked by saving a collection of real drawings to every version and auditing the copies with AutoCAD.

Fast with large drawings

GPU redraw and multi-core processing: an 80 MB DWG with almost 490,000 entities opens in about 4 seconds on a current computer and pans and zooms smoothly.

Written in Rust

Fast on drawings with hundreds of thousands of entities, lightweight (a single executable, no heavy runtimes) and reliable (memory-safe, with crash recovery).

A familiar interface

Ribbon or Classic workspace with menus and toolbars, command line with aliases and autocomplete, dockable palettes, grips, object snaps and dynamic input.

Complete 2D

Hatches and gradients, associative and annotative dimensions, SHX and TrueType text, tables, leaders, dynamic blocks, attributes, external references and georeferenced images.

Layouts and plotting

Layouts with viewports, vector PDF with layers or PDF/A, SVG and PNG, system printers and multi-sheet publishing.

AutoLISP

About 200 language functions, including command, entget, ssget and your own commands defined with defun C:.

Python API & AI (MCP)

Automate Lince2D from Python (a local API and a wheel that reads and writes DWG/DXF without opening the program) and connect it to AI assistants through a built-in MCP server, with a panel that approves every change. Ideal for AI projects on drawings.

Windows and Linux

The same program, native on Windows x64 and Linux x64 (Ubuntu/Debian via .deb, other distros via .tar.gz). Written 100 % in Rust.

Built-in help

F1 on any button or dialog opens its page: about 500 per language, in English and Spanish, plus the manual in PDF and HTML.

Screenshots

All screenshots come from the real program. Most show the Spanish interface; the program is fully available in English.

A very dense office floor plan: 35 workstations with desk, monitor and chair, a meeting room with a table and sixteen chairs, toilets with fixtures and wall tiling, filled walls, setting-out axes and dimensions, all on colour layers. — Dense building plan on colour layers

A zoomed-in detail of the same plan: the workstations and the meeting room with its table and chairs, with text labels and axes. — Zoomed-in detail to scale

Two dozen 3D ACIS solids (prisms, cylinders, cones, spheres, tori and parts with drilled holes) in isometric view with the shaded-with-edges visual style. — 3D solids, shaded with edges

The 3D solids model shown at once in four model-space viewports, all shaded with edges. — Four viewports of the 3D model

Blocks palette with thumbnails, DesignCenter and tool palettes. — Blocks palette, DesignCenter and libraries

Table with formulas and the cell editing panel. — Tables with formulas and CSV import

All features, by area →

Platforms

Windows x64

.exe installer with the program, help, manual, templates and symbol library.

Ubuntu 24.04+ and Debian 13

.deb package for amd64, installed with apt.

Other Linux distributions

.tar.gz archive for x86_64 that runs straight from its folder, nothing to install.

Downloads will appear on the download page once the distribution terms are settled.

Project status

2D drawing and editing, layouts, plotting, basic AutoLISP and the help system are finished and in testing. In development: a 3D viewer for the solids and meshes found in DWG files, and a local automation interface. 3D modelling is not part of Lince2D.