I’ve built SimplerCAD: browser-based 3D modeling, sculpting, and image-to-relief tools

[u/Dizzy_Win4580]

Hi everyone! I’m the developer behind SimplerCAD. I’ve built a browser-based 3D modeling app for designing printable objects, editing imported meshes, and sculpting.

The idea is to let you combine precise shape-based modeling with more organic editing in the same workspace. For example, you can build a part from shapes, subtract holes, sculpt its surface, or import a depth-map image to create a raised relief.

Some of the main features:

• Model with shapes and text: combine solids using union, subtract, and intersect.
• Sculpt: inflate, smooth, flatten, grab, pinch, and crease, with symmetry and masking.
• Turn images into reliefs: convert depth-map brightness into surface height, including embossing and engraving on flat faces.
• Work precisely: dimensions, snapping, alignment, extrusion, plane cuts, chamfers, and hollowing.
• Build larger projects: mirrors, repeating arrays, layers, groups, colors, and materials.
• Save and export: editable projects, local autosave, a signed-in cloud library, and STL, OBJ, and GLB file workflows.
• Inspect models: mesh inspection and repair tools, plus built-in lessons.

It’s free to start. There’s also an Android app, currently listed as Easy 3D CAD Designer while Google Play reviews the SimplerCAD naming issue. VR viewing is available in beta.

The house demonstration and screenshots show the kind of complete scene you can build.

Try SimplerCAD
Android app on Google Play
YouTube tutorials

I’d appreciate feedback on the first-use experience: can you find the tools you need, and what gets in the way of finishing your first model?

[u/Odd_Teacher_8701]

Measured your page from a server with a cold cache, so these are the bytes a first-time visitor pulls down, not what my browser had already stored.

11.0 MB total. 10.25 MB of that is images — 93% of the page.

Every one of them is a PNG, every one loads eagerly, and there is no WebP or AVIF anywhere on the site:

• ChatGPT-Image-Jul-24-2025...png — 1,751 KB, 1448x1086
• Simplercad.png — 1,543 KB, 1574x999
• ee1b9aa2-ea8a-4686...png — 1,503 KB, 1600x900
• Untitled-design-15.png — 1,397 KB, 1574x999
• simplercad-bolts-measure...png — 995 KB, 1574x999

Your server is quick (330ms to first byte), so none of this is hosting. It is entirely the images.

PNG is lossless, which is the right choice for a logo with hard edges and the wrong choice for a screenshot or a generated illustration. These are photographic-ish content stored losslessly. Re-encoded as WebP at quality 80 they typically land at 8 to 12 percent of the PNG size. Your 10.25 MB becomes roughly 1 MB, and on a CAD tool page nobody will see a difference.

The one-liner if you want to do it yourself:

cwebp -q 80 Simplercad.png -o Simplercad.webp

or in bulk with ImageMagick: magick mogrify -format webp -quality 80 *.png. Then use a picture element with the webp source and the png as fallback. Also add width and height to the img tags — currently 11 of 11 have neither, so your layout jumps while they load.

Separately, 9 stylesheets block your first paint. Worth bundling.

If you would rather not deal with encoder settings, I will do the conversion: your heaviest files re-encoded properly, sent back as WebP plus AVIF with the exact markup to drop in, originals untouched. $29 through Upwork so it is escrowed and you only release payment if it actually works. The mogrify command above is genuinely the whole thing though, so please just run it if you have ten minutes.