WoodSketch

Free and open source

Design it the way you already know.
Build it from real lumber.

WoodSketch is a free, open-source 3D modeler made for woodworkers. Draw with the tools and shortcuts you know from SketchUp, and it cuts the joinery, checks the wood movement, and hands you a cut list, a shopping list and a build sheet for every part.

Download WoodSketch View on GitHub

Free and open source. Windows, Mac and Linux. No account, works offline, updates itself.

A white oak cabinet in WoodSketch: two drawers with bar pulls above a pair of frame-and-panel doors with plywood panels, made from the Cabinet template.
A white oak cabinet from the Cabinet template: two drawers on slides and a pair of frame-and-panel doors, every joint already cut. Change a size and it rebuilds.

Why WoodSketch

Familiar if you know SketchUp

Same tools, same one-letter shortcuts, same habit of just typing a size: draw a rectangle, type 24,3/4", push it up 38mm. It even opens your SketchUp files.

Parts know they're wood

Give a part Red Oak or Baltic Birch and it knows its species, its grain direction, whether it's flat-sawn or quartersawn, and how much it will move.

From model to shop

A cut list, cutting diagrams, a shopping list in real stock ("buy a 2x4, 8'"), and a printed build sheet for every part, all from the drawing.

Free and open source

No subscription, no account, no extensions to buy. Licensed MIT or Apache-2.0, and the code is on GitHub for anyone to read, use or improve.

Woodworking built in, not bolted on

A general 3D modeler draws boxes. Turning them into joinery, a cut list and shop drawings is left to you, or to extensions. In WoodSketch it's part of the app.

Joinery

Joints that cut themselves

Pick two parts and a joint. WoodSketch cuts the mortise and grows the tenon, lays out the dovetails, drills the pocket holes at 15°. A brace at an angle gets an angled tenon. Change or remove any joint later.

Shop drawings

A build sheet for every part

Each part drawn to scale from three sides, every cut measured from your reference face and edge, the steps in shop order. Then the assembly: exploded views and the glue-up in order.

Wood movement

It warns you before the top cracks

How far each part moves with the seasons, from the USDA Wood Handbook by species and cut, and a warning where a joint will fight it: a top glued across its aprons, a breadboard end glued along its length.

Buying

A shopping list in real stock

Every part picks the board or sheet it comes from. Lumber is laid out on standard lengths, sheets packed with the grain the right way, wide tops glued up from boards you can buy.

Templates

Furniture from a few sizes

A cabinet, drawer, face frame or table from a handful of numbers, joinery and hardware included: drawers on slides, doors on hinges, pulls. Change a size and the whole thing rebuilds.

AI assistant

Design with your AI assistant

Ask Claude (or another assistant that speaks MCP) for "a nightstand, 24" tall, in cherry" and it builds it in WoodSketch: a real drawing with joinery, a cut list and a movement check that you open and change.

And it stays a modeler: Line, Push/Pull, Move, groups, components, tags, inference. Use it for a shed, a deck or a jig as easily as for a dresser.

What it does today

Everything on this page works in the current build; what's still coming is listed under Where it's headed.

An oak leg with a mortise cut in its side, and the apron's tenon pulled out of it; beside it a cherry drawer front and side pulled apart to show the dovetail pins and tails.
A mortise and tenon and a dovetailed drawer corner, pulled apart to show what WoodSketch cut.

Joinery

Pick two parts, pick a joint

Select the parts and the Joinery panel offers what fits how they meet. Sizes are suggested from the stock; change any of them.

  • Dados, grooves and rabbets; mortise and tenon (blind, through or haunched); through and half-blind dovetails, with narrow hand-cut pins if you like; dowels, biscuits, Domino-style loose tenons, splines, box joints and half-laps.
  • Pocket screws drilled the way the jig does: a 3/8" pocket at 15°, stepping to a pilot out of the end.
  • Parts at an angle, like a brace into a post, get an angled mortise and tenon or a housing.
  • A fit allowance for a looser mortise, dowel hole or slot.
  • Change or remove a joint later, and the parts are rebuilt without it. A part used again as a component shares its joinery: four legs, one design, every mortise.
  • The dowels, biscuits and screws add up in a hardware list.
A printed build sheet for part D, Side apron, make 2: finished size, material and grain, face, edge and end views to scale with the tenons dimensioned, where each cut goes, and the steps: mill, cut the tenons, sand.
The build sheet for a table's side apron: drawn to scale, the tenons dimensioned and placed, the steps in order.

Build sheets

Print the plans, not just the parts list

One page per part, in cut-list order: its letter and count, finished size, stock and grain, three views to scale with hidden edges dashed, and what to do to it.

  • Every cut placed from your reference face and edge (or the bottom and left end until you pick them).
  • Steps in shop order: mill, glue up, joinery, profiles, sand.
  • Then a page per assembly, sub-assemblies first: an exploded view with the parts lettered, and the glue-up in order. Frames first, panels floated, drawers fitted and doors hung last.
The assembly page for a hall table: an exploded view of the top, aprons and legs with letters B, C, D and A pointing to each part, then step 1, glue up a frame of the front apron between two legs.
The assembly page: exploded, lettered, and the glue-up step by step.
A cherry hall table with movement arrows: the top marked in red as moving about 3/16 inch where it's held by the side aprons, the aprons in green at about 1/16 inch.
View > Wood Movement: the top's 3/16" in red where the aprons hold it; green parts can move.
A rectangular board with an inset panel: the outline was offset inward and the center pushed down a quarter inch, with 1/4" showing in the Distance box.
A door panel: Offset the top face, then Push/Pull the center down 1/4".

Modeling

The tools you already reach for

Line, Rectangle, Circle, Polygon, Arc (2-point, center, 3-point and pie), Push/Pull, Move, Rotate, Scale, Offset, Eraser, Tape Measure, Protractor, Dimensions, Text and Paint Bucket, plus Orbit, Pan, Zoom and Walk, all on their usual shortcut keys.

  • Push/Pull cuts rabbets and notches, pushes holes through for dowels, and closes a pocket you push back flush.
  • Inference that sticks: endpoints, midpoints, edges, guides, parallel and perpendicular, with arrow-key axis locks.
  • Type exact sizes any time, in fractional inches or millimeters: 3/4", 38mm.
  • Dimensions and text notes, saved with the drawing.
The white oak cabinet selected, with the Cabinet sizes panel in the tray: width, height, depth, stock, shelves, back, joints, and what fills each opening: doors, drawers, overlay or inset, pulls.
Select a template and its sizes are in the tray: change one and the cabinet rebuilds, joinery and all.

Templates

A cabinet in a minute

Type a few sizes and get a cabinet, a drawer, a face frame or a table, with its joinery already cut: dovetailed drawer corners, dadoed shelves, tenoned aprons.

  • Fill a cabinet's openings with drawers on side-mount slides (the longest that fits) or doors on concealed hinges.
  • Overlay or inset, slab or frame-and-panel, adjustable shelves on pins.
  • Slides, hinges, pulls and shelf pins go on the shopping list.
  • Change the sizes later and it all rebuilds.
A selected Red Oak panel with a grain arrow drawn on its face. Entity Info shows its size, its stock as a Red Oak 3/4 inch board glued up from boards, the grain along the 12 inch side, and the edge profile settings.
A Red Oak panel with its grain turned to run along the 12" side. The arrow shows it on the model.

Materials

Materials that are actual stock

Start from a library of common species and products: Red Oak, White Oak, Hard Maple, Cherry, Walnut, Poplar, Pine, Cedar, Plywood, Baltic Birch, MDF, Hardboard, and Pine, Douglas Fir, Cedar and pressure-treated lumber.

  • Draw a board straight from stock: pick a 2x4 or a 3/4" sheet and drag it out, or just type 2x4x96.
  • Each material knows the sizes it comes in: sheet sizes and thicknesses, lumber from 2x4 to 6x and 5/4 decking, and their lengths.
  • Grain direction shown as an arrow, and the cut (flat-sawn or quartersawn). Cut-list lengths run along the grain.
  • Wide tops glue up from narrower boards automatically, with dowels, biscuits or loose tenons along the seams if you like.
  • Edge profiles: roundover, chamfer, cove and ogee, mitered at the corners like a router leaves them.
The Cut List window's Parts tab. Lumber parts A and B are listed as 2x4 stock with quantity, length, width and thickness; plywood parts C, D and E as 3/4 inch sheet.
The Parts tab: identical parts grouped and lettered, with the stock each one comes from.

Cut list

A cut list that writes itself

Open the cut list and your parts are already there, grouped by material and size and labeled A, B, C. Each one picks its stock from its own dimensions.

  • Parts that still need a material are flagged so nothing gets missed.
  • Export to CSV for a spreadsheet, or print a cut sheet to take to the shop.
  • For a CNC: every part laid out flat as DXF or SVG, its outline, holes, and dados, grooves, rabbets and mortises as pockets by depth.
  • Wood movement per part, by species and cut, with the joints to watch.
WoodSketch's Cut List window. Lumber parts are laid out on two 8-foot and one 12-foot 2x4, plywood parts on a 4 by 8 sheet, with a 'Buy' line listing the boards and sheets to get.
Cutting diagrams and a shopping list: 2x4s laid out on standard lengths, plywood parts packed onto a 4×8 sheet.

Cutting diagrams

Know what to buy before you go

WoodSketch lays your parts out on the stock and tells you how many boards and sheets to pick up.

  • Sheet goods packed onto sheets, keeping grain running the right way.
  • Lumber packed onto standard lengths: draw an 84" stud in Pine Lumber and it says "buy a 2x4, 8'".
  • Set your saw kerf, and the stock sizes per material.
Five upright studs evenly spaced along the red axis. Four copies are selected after a Move copy with 4x typed in the Distance box.
One stud, copied with Move, then 4x to repeat it down the wall.

Organizing

Copies, arrays, groups and components

Copy with Move or Rotate and type 3x or /3 to make a row or spread copies evenly. Keep each board in its own group, use components for parts that repeat, and find them in the Outliner.

  • Boards you pull up from a flat face become their own group automatically.
  • Tags, in folders, to show and hide parts of the build.
  • Copy and paste, even between drawings. Undo and redo for everything.
WoodSketch in its dark theme: a hard maple cabinet with two drawers, charcoal panels, and the toolbar's icons in maple and amber.
The dark theme, with a maple cabinet of two drawers.

Everyday

Comfortable to work in

A layout that looks like SketchUp's on Windows, two-color icons, and a light or dark theme (or follow your system's).

  • Opens SketchUp 2021 and later files, with components, materials, tags, guides and dimensions; or imports one into your drawing.
  • Saves .woodsketch drawings, autosaves, and offers your work back if something goes wrong. Exports OBJ and STL for other 3D programs.
  • Updates itself, and if it ever crashes it offers to send a report (you see everything in it first).
  • Works with your AI assistant through woodsketch-cli, installed with the app; see the guide for agents.

Where it's headed

The plan, in order. None of these are in the app yet.

  1. More joinery.Sliding and lapped dovetails, joints between parts in different groups, angled dowels and half-laps, and placing pocket holes where you want them.
  2. Templates you can use as they come.Toe kicks, dividers, backs set in a rabbet, false drawer fronts, face-frame mullions, and the shelf-pin holes drilled.
  3. Drawers, doors and hardware.Solid raised panels sized for wood movement, undermount slides, face-frame cabinets, hinge cups bored in the doors, and hardware prices.
  4. A signed Mac installer and a user guide.So macOS stops warning you the way Windows no longer does, and a page of help for every tool.
  5. More from your SketchUp files.Smooth shading, scenes, transparency, and better guesses at which parts are lumber.
  6. Smarter buying.Cost estimates, using your leftovers first, part labels, and a choice of sheet sizes.
  7. More modeling.Solid tools (subtract, union, intersect), soften and smooth, curves you select in one click.
  8. More ways out.Parts nested onto sheets for CNC, each part as its own file, and glTF.

Get WoodSketch

Download the installer for your computer. WoodSketch checks for updates when it opens and installs them when you restart it.

  1. Windows: WoodSketch-win-x64-Setup.exe

  2. Mac with Apple silicon (M1 and later): WoodSketch-osx-arm64-Setup.pkg

  3. Mac with an Intel processor: WoodSketch-osx-x64-Setup.pkg

  4. Linux: WoodSketch-linux-x64.AppImage (make it executable, then run it)

The Windows installer is signed, so Windows names the publisher instead of calling it unknown. It may still warn you for a while yet, until the signature becomes a familiar one: click More info, then Run anyway. The Mac installer isn't signed yet, so right-click the file and choose Open. See what's new in each release.

Or build it yourself

WoodSketch is open source, so you don't have to take my word for what's in the installer — you can compile the program from the code and get exactly the same thing. You'll need Rust and a few build tools, and then it's three commands. The steps are in the README, and all the code is on GitHub.

It's young, and I'd like to hear from you. Expect rough edges, and save often. What gets built next depends on what people say they need: if a joint you use is missing, if the cut list doesn't suit how your shop works, or if something simply broke, tell me. In the app, Help > Report a Problem and Help > Send Feedback reach me directly and need no GitHub account — leave an email if you'd like a reply. If you do have an account, open an issue, or come to Discussions to ask how to do something, suggest what it should handle next, or show a piece you've made. Nothing is too small to mention, and starring the repo is the easiest way to follow along.