What's New in PatinaCAD: Release Notes

PatinaCAD 0.1.0

11 October 2026The first release

Everything you need to draw a leather pattern, prick it for the irons on your bench, check it, and print it at actual size or turn it into files for a laser cutter or a 3D printer.

Stitching holes and pricking irons

The Stitching tool lays holes along a stitch line for your pricking iron: along a whole outline at once, or one press at a time as at the bench. Double-click a closed stitch line to prick all the way round.
Fixed pitch, the default, keeps your iron's exact spacing. A run ends at the last whole stitch instead of squeezing in a short one, and before a corner the odd bit of length is shared over the last few stitches, none more than 10% off.
Auto pitch fits each side exactly, with a hole at both ends, and Number of holes gives exactly the number you type. With Fixed pitch, the status bar also shows the estimated best pitch: the spacing nearest yours that would fit the run exactly.
Hole on every corner puts a hole right on each corner and spaces each side on its own. A small rounded corner gets one hole in the middle of its curve.
Click an existing hole to start or end a run exactly in it, and the new holes carry on from it. While you prick, the line the holes will follow lights up.
Pressing by hand, each press starts in the last hole. One prong fewer shortens the next press so the run ends where you want, and Ctrl+Z takes back one press at a time.
Diamond, French, flat and round irons are built in. Add the irons on your bench, with their exact spacing, blade size and prong counts, in the Pricking irons dialog (Ctrl+H).

Seams, thread and stitching order

Stitch preview: press F6 to see the stitches as thread, front and back, at the thread's real thickness. A catalogue of 30 thread colours is built in, and you can add your own brands.
Right-click a hole and choose Always show the stitch preview to keep that seam drawn as thread while the preview is off.
Set the stitching order yourself from a hole's right-click menu: choose the next hole, end the stitching there, or put the order right from that hole on.
The stitching order stays tidy: pasting, flipping and mirroring holes, and opening a pattern, repair a broken order and turn round any hole that faces the wrong way.
A closed outline stitched only part of the way round, such as a pocket left open along one side, stays open at the gap.
Gussets: copy a panel's holes onto the edge it's sewn to, or turn a pricked curve into a straight strip with its holes.
Box stitch works along joined edges: select every piece of a curved panel edge and the gusset edge, and the holes follow round the corners.

Drawing and editing

Lines, Bézier curves, circles, ovals, rectangles, arcs, text and dimensions, with exact sizes typed in. Number boxes take sums such as 100/3 or 2*25.4, in millimetres or inches.
While you draw, the status bar measures the shape as you go: a line's length and angle, an arc's length and sweep, a circle's radius, diameter and circumference, an oval's or a rectangle's size and perimeter, and a Bézier curve's length and handles.
Round corners, offset a stitch line, mark centres and distances, draw circles that touch other shapes, trim lines and cut V-notches.
Round the corners of an outline one after another: the Beveling tool (X) goes on from line to line as you click, and clicking the first line again closes the outline.
Offset works on the shape you click, so a stitch line can run along just one side of a piece. Outer offset adds a copy round the outside of a closed outline, its corners joined.
Trim shows the piece that will go before you click, and distance marks follow joined lines round corners and can start from a stitching hole.
While you edit a text, its options are right there and change it as you go. The status bar warns when its font is missing.
Select, move, rotate, scale, flip, align and distribute shapes, nudge them by 1, 0.1 or 0.01 mm, and type exact sizes in the side panel.
Right-click to set your own rotation centre, to turn or scale about any point, or your own snap point, to drag a selection by a point that isn't one of its own.
Alt+click a selected curve to split it there. Right-click a curve's handle to make the joined curve's handle match it, and smooth joined curves from the right-click menu.
Layers, 40 line types, locking, undo and redo for every edit, and copy and paste between patterns and browser tabs.
Drag a layer up or down the list to change its place. Change a line type in one browser tab and your other open tabs show it straight away.

Sizing, tracing and measuring

The template library: bank cards, ID cards, passports and business cards, banknotes in 16 currencies, euro, US, UK, Indian and Japanese coins, studs, snaps and basic shapes. Each name gives its size, and stamped copies are drawn in red.
Save your own snaps, buckles and logos as templates, and stamp a template at even spacing along a line, such as a row of studs along a strap.
Tracing: put a photo, a scan or a PDF page under the drawing at its real size and draw over it. View all (Ctrl+R) fits the tracing images too.
Hold S to measure: the distance between two points, the length along the joined lines between them, and the total length of what you've selected.
Click a ruler to hide the rulers, and the box in the corner to bring them back.

Checking and printing

Pattern check finds gaps as small as 0.05 mm, lines a fraction of a degree off level, and ends that overlap. Fix one, or all of them, in one click. Its repairs never move shapes you've locked.
Print, or save a PDF, at actual size, tiled over A4 or Letter, with a 100 mm ruler on the first page and a calibration page for your printer. Ctrl+P opens the Print dialog.
Set the page margins on each side: left, top, right and bottom.
Scale to fit pages across prints a large pattern smaller, on the number of pages across you choose. The 100 mm ruler stays true size, and the first page notes the scale.
Tracing images can go on the paper too, under the drawing, at their true size and place.
Print areas (F7) show where the pages fall on the drawing. Hide when printing keeps construction lines, notes or the card you sized a pocket against off the paper.
Stitching holes print as solid outlines, so a laser cutting from the PDF cuts each hole whole. Dotted outlines, or a dot at the centre of each hole, are there too.

Files for laser cutters and 3D printers

SVG and DXF export for laser cutters and cutting machines, each line type on its own layer or colour, with stitching holes as solid outlines.
SVG import from other drawing programs, including shapes the file repeats, and text as text you can edit.
3D printing: turn a pattern into an STL file for a template to trace round, or a jig that holds the piece while you work. Text can be engraved, and edges chamfered or rounded (beta).
The 3D preview keeps up while you change the settings: the model is built in the background, and Export waits for the latest one.

The workspace and your files

Menus, a tool rail, a side panel that shows what the current tool needs, and a status bar, with your pattern on a dotted grid between rulers. The canvas is white in the light theme and black in the dark one.
Scroll to pan, pinch or Ctrl+scroll to zoom, or hold Space and drag. Points snap to the grid you can see.
A welcome screen, with a demo card holder to explore.
Your work is kept in the browser as you go and reopens by itself. In Chrome and Edge it's also saved to your pattern file automatically.
Options for millimetres or inches, the default stitching mode, printer calibration and more. Keyboard shortcuts for every tool are listed in Help ▸ Keyboard shortcuts, and the user guide opens from Help ▸ User guide. Help also opens the user guide online and these release notes.
PatinaCAD starts quickly: printing, 3D export and text fonts load the first time you use them.

What's new