Introduction
openie-cad is a Rust-first, WASM-native CAD + ECAD + Multi-Physics simulation engine. One codebase, one language, one file per product.
The thesis: the design IS the simulation. Every geometric entity carries physics from the moment it's created. No export/import/mesh-setup loop. No 80% of engineering time lost at the design–simulation interface.
Three entry points
You can use openie-cad in three ways:
- MCP (agent-callable) at https://cad.openie.dev/mcp — 60+ tools that an AI agent (Claude, GPT, etc.) can call directly. The MCP tool reference lists every tool with its arguments.
- REST API at https://cad.openie.dev/api — see REST API docs.
- Interactive viewer at https://cad.openie.dev/viewer/kicad?session=ID — live KiCad PCB viewer for any MCP session.
What's substrate-native vs commercial
openie-cad ships several algorithms that, as of June 2026, exist in no other open-source codebase under an MIT/Apache license:
| Algorithm | Paper / Origin | Where in substrate |
|---|---|---|
| LCIS BGA escape routing | Kong/Yan/Ozdal ICCAD 2007 | cad-router::bga_escape |
| FDTD Huygens NTFF antenna pattern | Balanis §6.7 textbook | cad-sim::antenna |
| Djordjevic-Sarkar + Cannonball-Huray 60 GHz loss | Shlepnev 2015, Simonovich 2015 | cad-sim::signal |
| preCICE-equivalent IQN-ILS coupling | Degroote 2009 / Chourdakis 2021 | cad-sim::coupling |
| SALT shallow-light Steiner topology | Chen et al. ICCAD 2017 | cad-router::steiner |
| Fang DAC 2024 length-match co-optimization | Fang et al. arXiv 2407.19195 | cad-router::length_tuning |
Every commercial equivalent — Altium, Cadence, Ansys, Comsol — charges thousands of dollars per seat per year for the same capabilities. The algorithm theory pages document each one with the originating paper cited.
Quickstart
See Quickstart for a 5-minute walkthrough of:
- Routing a small PCB via MCP.
- Generating a CAM toolpath.
- Running a multi-physics coupled simulation.