UnifiedCAD d/b/a UniCAD is a not-for-profit organisation developing free and open-source tools to democratise CAD.

Just four companies take 86% of all CAD revenue,¹ and their tools keep designs in closed file formats that don’t transfer cleanly between systems.² Studies put the cost of that friction at billions of dollars a year.^3,4

Companies like Datakit sell converters to get around this lock-in,⁵ but every format needs its own licence, at up to €2,500 each.⁶

EU law stops CAD vendors from banning this kind of work: file formats aren’t protected by copyright,⁷ and licence terms that forbid reverse engineering for compatibility are void.⁸

In 2006, Autodesk sued the Open Design Alliance in the US for writing Autodesk’s trademark into DWG files so that AutoCAD would trust them.⁹ We believe that was wrong: anyone should be able to edit files they own or rely on without fear of being sued by a conglomerate.

• More on the Kit project