OpenVCAD

Volumetric, Multi-Material, Programmable CAD for Additive Manufacturing

OpenVCAD is an open-source volumetric geometry compiler for the design and fabrication of functionally graded, multi-material objects. It brings advanced implicit modeling and programmable parametric design into the world of additive manufacturing.

Quick Start

pip install OpenVCAD

import pyvcad as pv
import pyvcad_rendering as viz

materials = pv.default_materials
root = pv.RectPrism(pv.Vec3(0,0,0), pv.Vec3(10,10,10), materials.id("red"))
viz.Render(root, materials)

Resources

Documentation	matterassembly.org/OpenVCAD-Docs/v2/
Project Website	matterassembly.org/openvcad
Examples	examples/ in this repo
Bug Reports	Issues
Community	Discussions
Source Code Access	Request Form

Examples

Clone this repo to get runnable example scripts:

git clone https://github.com/MacCurdyLab/OpenVCAD-Public.git
cd OpenVCAD-Public/examples

See the Getting Started tutorial in the documentation for a walkthrough.

License

OpenVCAD is released under a non-commercial open-source license. See the LICENSE file for details.

Citing OpenVCAD

If you use OpenVCAD in your research, please cite:

@article{wade2024openvcad,
  title={OpenVCAD: An open source volumetric multi-material geometry compiler},
  author={Wade, Charles and Williams, Graham and Connelly, Sean and Kopec, Braden and MacCurdy, Robert},
  journal={Additive Manufacturing},
  volume={79},
  pages={103912},
  year={2024},
  publisher={Elsevier}
}

@article{wade2025toolpaths,
  title = {Implicit Toolpath Generation for Functionally Graded Additive Manufacturing via Gradient-Aware Slicing},
  author = {Wade, Charles and Beck, Devon and MacCurdy, Robert},
  journal = {Additive Manufacturing},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2025.104963},
}

@article{wade2025pyvcad,
  title = {Implicit Modeling for 3D-printed Multi-material Computational Object Design via Python},
  author = {Wade, Charles and Beck, Devon and MacCurdy, Robert},
  journal = {Proceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2509.15562},
}

See the full list of publications for additional citations.