I haven’t tested this myself. That caveat matters and I want to be upfront about it. But when a free and open-source toolkit takes aim at a workflow problem that has existed for decades, it deserves a look.
Here’s the problem. You build a 3D model. Then you export it. Then you may rebuild or view the drawings in a separate CAD tool. Then you spend the next stretch of your day reconciling two parallel worlds that started drifting apart the moment someone touched the model. Plans, sections, elevations – the actual deliverables that drive construction – have always lived downstream of BIM in a separate application. That’s just how it works.
Release 3.4.0 of That Open Engine is taking a run at that problem directly.
By That Open Company
According to the release announcement, it ships a complete 2D Technical Drawings system built on top of Fragments, their native geometry format. You generate plans, sections, and elevations from a BIM model, annotate them, and export to DXF or PDF. All of it in the browser. No external CAD step.
The annotation toolkit covers what you would expect on a real sheet. Linear and angle dimensions. Leaders and labels. Slopes, elevations, coordinates. There’s a style system for controlling units and visual formatting, a symbol system for reusable elements like north arrows, and a drawing editor with snapping and drag-and-edit annotations.
Two UI components come with it. Paper Space for sheet-based layouts with title blocks and export controls. Infinite Canvas for multi-sheet setups with independent navigation across a full drawing set.
And the whole thing is open source. No licensing. No vendor negotiation. No premium tier where the useful stuff actually lives.
That last part is what stands out to me even before anyone has put this through its paces in production. Free and open tooling for 2D drawing generation from BIM data has not really existed at this level before. Maybe it needs a few more iterations before it holds up under real project conditions. That’s entirely possible. But the direction is right and the barrier to trying it is essentially zero.
The session is live April 9th, 2026. Antonio Gonzalez Viegas is presenting and the release drops during the event. Worth an hour of your time to watch.
https://people.thatopen.com/c/upcoming-events/top-event-native-2d-drawings-for-bim-release-3-4-0
Cheers,
-Shaan.
