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Photo → measured geometry

Turn photos into accurate CAD.

Photograph a real part. Get measured, editable CAD geometry and a true 3D solid, on your phone or at your desk.

Try LensCAD free
  • Free to trace and edit
  • No install
  • Phone and desktop
  1. Photo
  2. Trace
  3. CAD
  4. 3D
Actual LensCAD interface · no rendered concept art
01 · Photo

Photograph it on a printed sheet.

Perspective and scale are corrected from the sheet, or from one dimension you know.

02 · Trace

Smart Trace draws it, or you do.

Lines, arcs and circles on the real edges, on named layers.

03 · CAD

Measured, editable geometry.

Dimension it, edit any point, export a 1:1 DXF.

04 · 3D

Views become a true solid.

Keep building on it, then save STEP, 3DM, STL, OBJ or 3D DXF.

The full product walkthrough →

Compared with 3D scanning

A scan hands you a mesh. LensCAD hands you geometry.

A scan gives you a shell of triangles that somebody still has to draw over. LensCAD produces the drawing itself.

Real vector output

Lines, arcs and splines.

True CAD entities on named layers, not a triangle mesh. A hole is a circle you can dimension and change, and a rounded corner is an arc with a radius.

No hardware

A phone and a printed sheet.

No scanner, no turntable, no lighting rig. The reference sheet prints on ordinary paper.

Dimensions you can check

Measured, not inferred.

Scale comes from a reference you can see in the photo, so every dimension is one you can read off and verify.

Where a scanner still wins: freeform and organic surfaces, and anything whose shape you could not describe with lines and arcs. LensCAD is for parts that belong in a drawing, and its 3D solid is built from the views you photograph. How the 3D models are built →

Full CAD on mobile

A full CAD toolset on the phone that took the photo.

Not a viewer. Not a companion to a desktop seat. The same app, with every tool, on each of these screens.

The LensCAD editor on a phone held upright: the Draw panel open at the top with its tool row, the traced mower control housing below, and the bottom toolbar
Drawing
The same part as a 3D model on a phone held upright, with the Display panel open under the model
3D model
The LensCAD editor on a phone held sideways: the Draw panel docked on the left and the traced part on the right
Drawing
The 3D model on a tablet, with the Display panel under it
3D model
The LensCAD editor in a desktop browser: tool panel on the left, the traced part in the middle and the Layers column on the right
Drawing

One project, the same mower control housing, on every screen. Runs in the browser: nothing to install, nothing to sync.

The iPhone photo picker inside LensCAD, holding the mower control housing photographed from several angles, on the reference sheet and against calipers Shot and drawn on an iPhone
Want control? Draw and edit everything yourself.

Photographed, measured, drawn and built into a textured 3D solid, entirely on an iPhone.

The manual route, start to finish, entirely on an iPhone: a mower control housing photographed from several angles, scaled from a few real measurements, its geometry drawn and refined with the editor's own tools rather than Smart Trace, and the views combined into a dimensioned, textured 3D solid. Played at 8x: the 1:39 runtime is about 13 minutes of recorded work.

  • A powerful manual CAD drawing toolsetLines, arcs, curves, fillets, trim, offset, symmetry and point editing, built for a thumb as well as a mouse.
  • Hand-drawn or Smart Traced, the same solidThe views combine into one true 3D solid either way, and you can mix the two on one part.
Manual tracingiPhone onlyMulti-viewTrue solidPhoto texture
Want speed? Smart Trace can draw it.

Drawn from the photo, not sketched over it.

Smart Trace works out what the part is and draws every line, arc and corner on the real edge. Everything it draws is ordinary geometry you can edit.

  • Measured from the photoEvery line, arc and corner is checked against your photo before you see it.
  • Named, colour-coded layersRecognized components (body, trigger, handle) arrive on their own DXF layers.
  • Styles you can compare and combineOne run returns several interpretations. Keep the outline from one and the interior from another.
Measured accuracy
0.1 mm median

On our benchmark parts, traced outlines come back at roughly 0.1 mm median error against hand-measured ground truth.

How accuracy is measured →
The corrected, scaled photograph of a door in the LensCAD editor The same door with traced geometry drawn over every panel, light and edge Corrected photo Traced geometry

Drag to compare. Both frames are real LensCAD captures of the same corrected door.

Current examples · September 2026

Real parts, start to finish.

Short recordings of the app as it is today. All examples, including earlier workflows →

Wire strippers: three auto-traced photos to a textured 3D solid

Smart TraceMulti-viewTrue solidSTEP

Calipers: Smart Trace and automatic layers

Reference sheetSmart TraceNamed layersDimensions

Remote: a textured 3D model from three traced photos

Multi-viewTrue solidPhoto textureRecess and raise
Free to start. Pro for the whole part.

Everything is free to use. A one-view drawing downloads free.

Correction, calibration and the whole editor are free, and so is the DXF of a one-view drawing. Pro and Studio unlock multi-view drawings and the 3D model in every format, with Smart Trace runs every month. Full pricing, Studio and refund terms →

Free
$0
  • Correction, scale and the full editor
  • DXF download for a one-view drawing
  • 3 free Smart Trace runs to start
  • No multi-view DXF, no 3D model files
Create a free account
Pro
$49/ year
About $4 a month, billed yearly
  • Everything in Free
  • Multi-view DXF export
  • 3D models: STEP, 3DM, STL, OBJ and 3D DXF
  • 30 Smart Trace runs a year, added monthly
  • Studio: 100 runs a year for $149
  • Renews yearly. Cancel any time from your account page
See full pricing

Start with a photo. Leave with CAD.

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