Git-based CAD collaboration that hides Git behind a button.
Built for FRC Team 2129 (Ultraviolet). SolidWorks-friendly. No CLI required.
FrameCAD is a desktop app that lets a robotics team collaborate on SolidWorks assemblies the same way developers collaborate on code — except your students never see a Git command. Under the hood it's Git + Git LFS + GitHub; on the surface it's Download, Upload, Check Out, and Check In.
- 🔒 Check-out / check-in locks on every CAD file so two students can't accidentally edit the same part at the same time. Backed by
git lfs lock. - 📁 Auto part numbering in your team's format (
YY-2129-XX-YYY). New parts and assemblies are created pre-named — SolidWorks references never break from renames. - 🔧 SolidWorks task pane add-in with the same buttons (Check Out / Check In / Sync / Publish) inside SolidWorks itself.
- 📊 Build-season documents generated from your CAD: Bill of Materials (CSV + PDF), Manufacturing Queue cut list (CSV + PDF), Project Summary with FRC 125 lb weight headroom (Markdown + PDF).
- 🛒 Manufacturing queue that groups released parts by method (3D Print / CNC / Manual / Other) and material — shop floor walks the queue in one direction.
- 🗂️ COTS library support — share a separate Git repo of off-the-shelf parts across all your team's robot projects.
- 🚦 Pre-publish guards catch giant non-LFS files before you waste an hour uploading something GitHub will reject.
- 🛠️ Repository health scanner lists every file over 50 MB with badges (
BLOCKER/WARNING/OK (LFS)) so you can clean up before the build season crunch. - 🔑 Role-gated settings — admins and mentors see full team/project configuration; students see only their profile. Powered by the self-hosted team server's member roster (see server/).
- 🌐 Self-hosted LFS storage (opt-in) — point project LFS at your own server when GitHub's bandwidth quota gets tight.
- 🚀 Auto-update from GitHub Releases on Windows and Linux.
Because students who can build a swerve drive in CAD shouldn't have to learn to resolve a rebase conflict at 11 PM the night before competition.
FrameCAD trades Git's full power for one workflow that fits the way FRC teams actually work — and bakes in the FRC-specific bits Git doesn't know about: weight limits, manufacturing methods, part numbers, the shop's cut list, and the fact that some students design at home on their personal laptop while the rest of the team works on a school machine.
Latest installers are auto-built from main:
| Platform | Installer |
|---|---|
| Windows | .exe from GitHub Releases — auto-installs Git, Git LFS, and GitHub CLI via winget if missing |
| macOS | .dmg from GitHub Releases — Apple Silicon + Intel. Right-click → Open the first time (unsigned). Admin-only build, no SolidWorks add-in |
| Linux | .AppImage from GitHub Releases — chmod +x and run. Admin-only build, no SolidWorks add-in |
SolidWorks add-in is auto-registered by the Windows installer. The Mac and Linux builds are intended for mentors and admin work — SolidWorks itself only runs on Windows.
- Download and install FrameCAD for your platform.
- Sign in to GitHub from the welcome screen (the installer already put
ghCLI on your machine if winget was available). - Click Create Project to start a new robot, Browse Projects to list existing team repos, or Join Project to clone one by URL.
- Open a CAD file in SolidWorks. Check Out before you edit it. Check In when you're done. Upload to push your changes for the rest of the team to see.
For a student-friendly walkthrough, see docs/STUDENT_SETUP.md.
- 125 lb weight tracking with live headroom callout on the status bar and in the auto-generated project summary
- Per-part release workflow (draft → in-review → released → manufactured) so mentors can sign off on parts before the shop cuts them
- Cascade in-review — marking an
.sldasmas in-review automatically sweeps every part under that folder into the same state in one commit - Per-part thumbnails rendered from the OS shell preview, plus a 200px preview in the details panel
- Where Used view shows every assembly a part belongs to, with one-click navigation to the parent
- Bulk metadata editing — multi-select parts in the Parts Manager and apply release / method / material to all of them at once
- Mass + cost rollups by subsystem and by manufacturing method, refreshed every five seconds while you work
- Comments thread per part — note your manufacturing tolerances, gotchas, or "do not edit until we settle the gear ratio"
- Folder dirty badge — collapsed folders show a count of unpublished files inside so changes can't hide
- Weekly progress tags for snapshotting CAD state at design-review milestones
framecad://join?url=…deep links in auto-generated project README so new teammates one-click into the Join Project flow- Accessibility: OpenDyslexic UI font toggle (
Ctrl+Shift+D), responsive layout that adapts down to 960×600, dark and light themes
- Developer docs (
docs/DEVELOPMENT.md) — architecture, dev setup, REST API reference, SolidWorks add-in build - Student setup guide (
docs/STUDENT_SETUP.md) — getting students onto the team's CAD repo - Built-in onboarding tour runs the first time you open the app
This is a small project built for one FRC team, but PRs and issues are welcome — especially if you're running FrameCAD for your own team and have hit a wall.
Source-available for FRC team use. No license file is currently included — if you're a mentor on another team interested in using FrameCAD, open an issue and we'll talk.