About

Our Vision

CAD-Viewer.org aims to become a high-quality website for sharing CAD files. We believe that the future of engineering and most of the software is on the web, and that’s why we created rapid & secure cloud infrastructure.

While our software is still in its early stages, we strive to provide a seamless experience. If you encounter any issues, please try refreshing the page (Ctrl+Shift+R) or reach out to our support team for assistance.

Our Business Approach

At this time, this project is not designed to generate revenue. As long as we be able to afford the server costs, we will offer the following services for free:

  1. For un-registered users: Free usage of the software with limitations due to spam & boots.
  2. For registered users: Full usage of the software & X Mb/Gb of free storage for private content.

Should server costs increase, and we need to expand our infrastructure, we plan to add the following options:

  1. For premium users: The possibility of buying extra storage and the priority on conversion queues.
  2. For enterprises: Private cloud instances and on-demand customization.

*Currently those options are not available, but if they interest you do not hesitate to contact us.

The story behind the project

This project was conceived and developed by me, Rafael Senties Martinelli, a software subcontractor in the aeronautics industry. Alongside my professional work, I dedicate time to exploring and maintaining personal projects.

The idea of a CAD viewer began in November 2015 during my studies, when a colleague from the University, Paul Renard, shared with me a Python snippet based on pythonocc-core. The library’s potential immediately caught my attention, and I saw an opportunity to combine it with the Django framework to create a web-based CAD viewer.

By December 2015, I had developed the first version and launched it on my personal website. However, after a year, I decided to pause my software projects and temporarily take the viewer offline.

The project stayed on hold until the summer of 2018, when a conversation with a CAD expert, Romain Chelmas reignited my interest. His curiosity and enthusiasm motivated me to create a demo for him and relaunch the project online.

While I’ve always believed this project holds great potential for the industry, the key question for me was whether it was worth dedicating my free time to a project entering an increasingly competitive market. After some consideration, I decided to continue developing it—not with the goal of turning it into a business, but driven by my passion for technology and software development.

Finally, after some years as a "demo software", in 2020, I decided to give it more attention and develop a professional version. I transitioned it to a custom domain, a private server, and despite limited resources, I do my best to provide a high-quality service.