About

CAD-Viewer.org is a European project to create 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 issue, please try refreshing the page or reaching out to our support team for assistance.

The story behind the project

This project is conceived and developed by me, Rafael Senties Martinelli, a software subcontractor. Alongside my professional work, I dedicate some time to explore and maintain personal projects.

The idea of a CAD viewer began in November 2015, while doing a Master’s Degree on Mechanical Design Engineering. Paul Renard, a colleague from the University, shared with me a snippet based on pythonocc-core and the library’s potential immediately caught my attention. I saw an opportunity to import it in the Django framework and create a web-based CAD viewer.

By December 2015, I had developed the first version and launched it inside 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.