Two photos in, a 3D model out.
Photograph two or three sides of the part on the reference sheet and trace each one. Press 3D and LensCAD reconciles those views into a single width, length and thickness, correcting each face for how far it stood above the paper using the camera data your phone already recorded, then builds the shape all of your views agree on. It tells you what it assumed, and nothing is written to a file until you have turned the model over and said yes.
The traced outlines become a true CAD solid built by a real CAD kernel, with genuine faces and edges. A fillet you traced comes back as a true arc, not a fan of tiny chords. The 3D model is its own step: go back to the drawing, change something, and come back to a model that rebuilds only when something it is made from has changed.
A visual hull, and what that means.
The model is the solid your views have in common: each traced silhouette is extruded through the part along its own axis and the prisms are intersected. That is exactly right for the outer shape of most parts. It cannot see a feature that no silhouette shows, such as a pocket in the middle of a face or an undercut, and it does not carve interior features on its own. Interior shapes, faces you draw on and edges you round are handled explicitly, by you, below. Two views is the minimum; three sides pin down all the detail. The preview names every assumption in plain language beside the model.
- One model, five files. Save the solid as a STEP for CAD, a 3DM file that opens as the finished part, an STL for printing, an OBJ with your photos mapped onto it, or a 3D DXF with every traced curve on its own layer. All five are cut from the same faces.
- A 3DM file that is the finished part. The .3dm holds one closed solid with every cut, recess, boss and fillet already applied, so it opens as the finished part with nothing left to subtract, even in a phone viewer. It is written as a version 7 .3dm file, so software that reads version 7 or later opens it. The editable extrusions, cutters and traced curves ride along on hidden layers.
- The views are reconciled, not averaged. A face sitting above the reference sheet photographs slightly large. LensCAD works out how far above from the camera data in your photos and corrects for it, and says which reading it used. Check views lists how every view reads each dimension of the part, and Match scales the others to the view you trust, or squashes a view along one axis when two photos genuinely disagree.
- Turn it over first. Drag to tumble, pinch to zoom, two fingers to pan, and twist two fingers to spin the model about the screen. Show it as a solid, wearing its photos, as a ghost you can see through, or as a wireframe of its real edges. A part shot the wrong way round is obvious in three seconds and invisible in a dimension line.
- Holes, recesses, bosses, floors and shells. Every shape you traced inside the part is laid over the model. Select the ones you want, pick what to do and how much, and press Apply: cut straight through, recess by a depth, raise into a boss, cut through but leave a floor of a set thickness, or shell the whole part to a wall with the chosen shapes as openings. Depths follow the part's own surface, even where it slopes. Shapes you leave alone still travel into the files as sketch curves.
- Your photo on the model. Each face can wear the picture it came from, lined up with the outlines you traced. The OBJ and the 3D DXF carry those photos out with them, clipped to the traced outlines; one checkbox saves either file without them.
The model is a starting point, not the end.
Once the outer shape is built, the 3D screen has the panels to carry on: Shapes, Faces, Edges, Display and Simplify. Every step goes into one Undo, Redo and Revert history and into the project file.
- Draw on any flat face. Tap a face of the model, including a slanted one, and open it as a new view at true scale with its outline already drawn. When a camera saw that face, its photo comes with it, warped flat, so you can trace a feature straight off the picture. Pockets, bosses and cutouts drawn there follow the face's own angle.
- Fillets and chamfers. Tap the edges you want, choose Fillet or Chamfer and a size, and Apply. Each pick is remembered by where it is on the part, so it survives a rebuild, and one that can no longer be found is reported rather than applied somewhere else.
- Round where the views meet. Where two views' outlines cross, the model has a sharp edge nobody drew. One radius rounds those creases, and the preview says how many it reached.
- A matching part over the original. Mark layers as an add-on body and draw a second part over the first, such as a shroud over a control housing. It is built from the same photographs, shaded plain rather than wearing a photo, and can have the original subtracted from it with a clearance you choose. Show or hide either body; every file carries both, as separate solids.
- Simplify. A slider thins hand-traced outlines so the model has fewer, cleaner faces, and reads out exactly how far the outline moved. The simplified outline goes on new layers beside the original, and one button puts full detail back.
- The model's outline back on the drawing. The finished model's outline, as each view sees it, can be drawn onto every view on its own layer, so rounded edges show up in the 2D drawing too.
Export formats and how each behaves.
STEPThe solid for CAD
The kernel's own solid, in millimetres (CAD converts on import), with true planar and cylindrical faces. Cuts, recesses, bosses, shells and fillets are real CAD operations. Shapes you left alone ride along as sketch curves on the face they belong to. An add-on body is a second solid in the same file.
3DM (.3dm)The finished solid, plus the editable pieces
One closed, valid solid on the Solid layer, in the model's units, written as a version 7 .3dm file. Hidden layers hold the body and boss extrusions, the other views' prisms, the cutters, every traced curve on its face, and the reference mesh. An add-on body has a layer of its own.
STLTriangles, in your drawing units
The solid's own tessellation, written in the job's units because STL carries no unit of its own. Flat faces and crisp edges, not a voxel skin. STL cannot carry sketch curves or photos.
OBJ + photosThe model wearing its photographs
A zip of the OBJ, its material file and one atlas image holding every view's photo, with each face's texture coordinates taken from the same mapping the preview paints with. The part and an add-on body are separate objects, so they can be pulled apart in any 3D program. With photos off it is a plain flat-shaded mesh.
3D DXFThe mesh, the curves on hidden layers, and optionally the photos
A welded mesh of the solid, each view's outline as a closed 3D polyline on its face, through-cuts as true circles, all on layers switched off so they are there when you want them. With photos on, each view's photograph lands on the face it shows, clipped to the traced outline. Units follow the job.
How to photograph the viewsThe convention the 3D layout expects
Third-angle projection: the front view looks at the bottom edge of the top photo, the back at the top edge, a side is shot straight on with the part's top toward the top of the photo. The Add View dialog shows an illustration of each one. A symmetric part can mirror one side onto the other instead of being photographed twice. A view can be relabelled or deleted from the results screen, and a view that measures the wrong size for its label is flagged, with the fix offered.