cad

What This Skill Does

The cad skill serves as a specialized computer-aided design (CAD) assistant designed for OpenClaw users who need to manage design entries, technical metadata, and project-specific documentation. It acts as a CLI-based manager that organizes CAD data into a structured local repository. By leveraging a JSONL-based storage system located in ~/.cad/, this tool ensures that design-related information is easily accessible, searchable, and exportable. Whether you are tracking iteration versions, organizing project assets, or managing configuration settings for your design workflow, the cad skill provides a consistent command-line interface to streamline your engineering and drafting processes. It effectively bridges the gap between raw data storage and actionable design management within the OpenClaw ecosystem.

Installation

To integrate the CAD assistant into your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/bytesagain1/cad Once installed, you can verify the setup by running scripts/script.sh version to ensure the core components are correctly initialized. The tool will automatically create a configuration directory at ~/.cad/ upon first use, where your project data will reside by default.

Use Cases

This skill is ideal for technical professionals and students who require a lightweight, version-agnostic system for cataloging design tasks. Use it to keep track of design entries during a sprint, generate statistical reports on the number of designs handled, or export your current project progress to external formats for team review. It is particularly useful for users working on multiple small-scale CAD projects who prefer CLI speed over GUI overhead.

Example Prompts

1. "CAD assistant, list all my currently active design entries and show me the statistics for this week."
2. "Add a new CAD entry for the mechanical chassis project with the current date and description."
3. "Search for all design entries matching the keyword 'prototype' and export them to a file."

Tips & Limitations

The cad skill excels at metadata management but is strictly a storage and organization tool; it does not perform geometric rendering or 3D modeling operations. To get the most out of the tool, regularly use the export command to maintain backups of your JSONL data. Ensure the CAD_DIR environment variable is correctly configured if you prefer to store your project data in a non-standard location such as a cloud-synced folder or an external drive. Note that because data is stored in JSONL format, it is easily portable to other analysis tools if you need to perform advanced data visualization or auditing outside of the OpenClaw environment.