STEP2SVG

This repository contains the automation scripts for exporting and preprocessing SVG drawings from CAD models. This work is part of our project: Drawing2CAD: Sequence-to-Sequence Learning for CAD Generation from Vector Drawings, ACM MM 2025.

Export SVG Drawings

Follow these steps to set up the automation pipeline:

1. Install FreeCAD Download and install the latest version of FreeCAD.

2. Set up the Macro - Open FreeCAD.

   • Go to the navigation bar and select Macro > Macros....
   • You can either create a new macro and paste the code, or copy the step2svg.FCMacro from this project into your FreeCAD Macro folder.

3. Configuration & Execution Open the script and update the following paths to match your local environment:

   • step_file: Path to your source CAD models.
   • drawing_folder: Destination folder for the exported SVGs.
   • template: Path to your SVG drawing template.

   Once configured, click Execute macro within the Macro editor.

💡 Notes

• Dynamic Delays: The time.sleep(0.5) commands are used to allow sufficient time for template and drawing loading. Please adjust these durations based on your computer's performance and the complexity of your CAD models.

• UI Refreshing: Frequent use of doc.recompute() and Gui.updateGui() ensures the interface refreshes constantly, which is critical for the drawings to render and export correctly.

• Batch Processing: While it is entirely possible to wrap this logic into a Python loop for batch processing, FreeCAD must remain open and visible throughout the entire process to ensure the GUI-dependent rendering functions correctly.

Preprocess SVG Drawings

coming soon.

Cite

Please consider citing our work if you find it useful:

@article{qin2025drawing2cad,
  title={Drawing2CAD: Sequence-to-Sequence Learning for CAD Generation from Vectorized Drawings},
  author={Qin, Feiwei and Lu, Shichao and Hou, Junhao and Wang, Changmiao and Fang, Meie and Liu, Ligang},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.18733},
  year={2025}
}

@inproceedings{qin2025drawing2cad,
  author = {Qin, Feiwei and Lu, Shichao and Hou, Junhao and Wang, Changmiao and Fang, Meie and Liu, Ligang},
  title = {Drawing2CAD: Sequence-to-Sequence Learning for CAD Generation from Vector Drawings},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1145/3746027.3755782},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia},
  pages = {10573–10582},
}