Short answer: it's made by one person, it was built with Claude code, and it's brand new. Here's the longer one.
I'm an engineering student (and doing mechanical engineering work for a startup), not a software company. Most CAD is rented for over $1,000 per year, and it still lacks. So I stopped complaining and made my own. CAD you buy once and keep. It started as something I just wanted to make for myself, and quickly became something I wanted to share.
I designed Crusade and built it with Claude Code (Opus 5.5 mainly and some with Fable 5.1), describing what I wanted, testing, and modifying if necessary until it looked and worked well. Its 3D geometry comes from OpenCASCADE, a long-established open-source geometry kernel, and its windows from Qt. Nothing in it was made by decompiling or copying the code of other CAD software. I made it by describing what I wanted. It works the way parametric CAD usually works (sketches, features, a feature tree), so it feels familiar if you've used CAD before.
Every open-source part is listed, with its license, on the Licenses page.
Crusade was first released in October 2026. It does a lot already (and testing so far shows it does things quite reliably and fast), but it hasn't been tested as much as I'd like yet, so expect rough edges, and please tell me when you hit one because I want this software to be something great. SimpleSim gives rough strength numbers almost instantly: double-check them, and test real parts, before you rely on a design. The price goes to $50 when 1.0 is released; buy during the beta and you never pay the difference.
Not sure yet? The free viewer opens, measures, renders and prints Crusade files with no license and no account, and every license comes with a 30-day refund, for any reason or no reason.
- Kyle Chandler