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Tutorials

Your first design in CAD mode

Open a repository of design packages in CAD mode, install what it needs, and get a design's shapes on screen.

This tutorial ends with a design's shapes on screen in the CAD viewer, from a repository of design packages you already have. The skill and the runtime install once per repository and per machine. Opening a design after that takes only a few presses.

What you need

• Turret installed and open
• A folder holding a repository of design packages — a directory carrying a design.toml file

Steps

1. Press the sidebar's New control. The New Session screen opens over the window.
2. Press the CAD mode card. It becomes the current choice, and the folder field below it relabels to Repository folder.
3. Type the repository's path into the Repository folder field.
4. Press Claude Code under Engine.
5. Press Create. Turret opens a session on the folder, in CAD mode.
6. Look at the session header, above the transcript. A CAD skill missing chip is there.
7. Press the chip, then Install skill in the note it opens. Turret writes the skill's files into the repository and the chip goes away.
8. Look at the pane beside the transcript. A band there can offer to set up CAD mode's runtime on this machine, the first time a session in CAD mode opens here.
9. Press Set up CAD mode. Turret downloads and starts the runtime — a cold start can take a couple of minutes — and the band clears once it finishes.
10. Press the tab strip's + control. Every design package found in the folder lists there, with a line beneath it. A design with no build yet reads never built.
11. Press the design you want to open. A red line of text shows at the tab strip's edge — this design has not been built. The viewer keeps showing its own empty state underneath it.
12. Tell the session to build the design. It runs the design's Python, writes the result into the package's build/ folder, and reports each part's size once the build succeeds.
13. Press the tab strip's + control, then press the design's entry again. The viewer renders its shapes.

After this, ask the session to change a dimension. It edits the design's Python, builds again and looks at the result. The open tab refreshes itself each time a build finishes.

A machine that already carries CAD mode's runtime skips straight to an already-working viewer, with no runtime band to press through. A repository whose skill is already current skips its own band the same way.

See Install the design skill for the skill and the runtime setup on their own. See Pick which design is on screen for switching between several open designs. Draw a shape on a face is the natural next step once a design is open.

See Fix a CAD session that sits waiting for its runtime for the runtime setup going wrong. See Fix a design that will not open for the last step going wrong.