cad-viewer-skill

CAD Viewer

Provenance: maintained in earthtojake/text-to-cad. Use the installed local skill files as the runtime source of truth; the repository link is only for provenance and release review.

Use this skill to open existing or newly generated CAD, implicit CAD, robot-description, DXF, or plain FDM G-code files in CAD Viewer and hand back live review links. The expected input is one or more explicit file paths.

Start Viewer

Start or reuse one local CAD Viewer with npm run agent:start, passing the absolute artifact directory as --dir. The agent:start launcher owns port selection, compatible-server reuse, directory activation, and the ?dir= query parameter. Dev-mode viewers are reused only for matching git identities; dist bundle viewers can be reused across git branches when their viewer versions match. It activates reused servers through the Viewer's lightweight directory activation API, without requiring agents to probe ports or trigger catalog scans manually. Use the Viewer URL printed by agent:start as-is, then add only a file= query value for the artifact you want to review.

Choose --dir as the absolute directory that contains the model artifacts and sidecars, commonly <repo>/models or the consuming project's equivalent model directory. The file= value must be relative to that --dir. Do not manually choose ports, probe servers, rewrite ?dir=, or start a separate Viewer just to change directories.

Run from this skill directory:

npm --prefix scripts/viewer run agent:start -- --host 127.0.0.1 --dir <absolute-model-root>

Use the printed Viewer URL and append file=:

http://127.0.0.1:<printed-port>/?dir=/absolute/project/models&file=path/to/model.step

If a non-Viewer process or another worktree's Viewer occupies the candidate port, the launcher will continue automatically. In sandboxed agent environments, local binding or probe failures such as EPERM or EACCES can be expected; rerun the same command with the needed permission/escalation.