CAD-free aluminium design: a starter guide

Most of the windows and doors a shop makes are not new designs. They are a known system, at a size, in a configuration you have built many times. Drawing each one in CAD repeats work the system already defines. CAD-free design starts from the description instead: you enter the sizes and pick the system, and the software builds the frame from your supplier's profile sections.

What CAD-free means

CAD-free does not mean drawing-free. It means you do not do the drawing. You describe the item: the system, the opening size, the configuration, the glass, the colour and the hardware. The software already knows each profile section in your supplier catalogue and how the parts go together, and it builds a 3D model from that. The drawings are an output, not an input.

It is worth saying what it is not. It is not a sketching tool for shapes nobody has made before, and it is not a substitute for engineering. It builds standard windows from standard parts. The checks you would apply to a hand-drawn job still apply: span, wind rating and glass selection.

Enter the sizes, pick the system

The working sequence is short.

1. Start with the opening. Enter the height and the width in millimetres. Frame size or reveal size, whichever your shop works to, but be consistent.
2. Pick the system from your supplier catalogue: the framing series, then the type: fixed, awning, sliding or hinged door.
3. Set the configuration. Number of panels, which ones open and which way, where the transoms and mullions sit.
4. Choose the glass and the finish. Thickness and type per pane, frame colour, hardware.

The frame builds from the actual profile sections, so the model has the real profile depths and glazing pockets, not a line drawing that looks about right. Change a size and the frame rebuilds. Swap a fixed light for an awning and the sash, the hardware and the glass size follow. In Alumetric the 3D model is built from the supplier's profile sections, and every list below is read straight off that model.

What you get without drawing

• Cutting list. Every member with its length and cut angle, grouped by profile, ready for the saw.
• Glass list. Each pane with its height, width, thickness and type, on a glass sheet you can send to your glazier as it is.
• Shop drawings. An elevation and the cross sections the bench needs to assemble the frame.
• DXF and DWG files. For the people who do use CAD, the builder's drafter, the architect or the engineer, a true-scale cross section they can drop into their own drawing.

All of it comes from the one model. Change the model and the lists change with it, so the cutting list on the bench and the glass order at the glazier cannot describe two different windows.

Where an assistant helps

A window schedule from a builder usually arrives as a document, not as data. Typing it in by hand is slow, and it is where marks get swapped. An assistant can read the uploaded schedule into a build list: one entry per opening with the mark, the size and the type, ready for you to build.

The useful part is what it does with the lines it is not sure about. A size with no unit, a mark that appears twice, a glass description that matches nothing in your catalogue: these are flagged for you to confirm, not guessed. It does not substitute products you do not carry. If the schedule names a system or a glass that is not in your catalogue, the line waits for your decision. You confirm the list, then the models are built. The judgement stays with you.

Starting well

• Load your supplier catalogue first. Everything builds from the profile sections and hardware in it. A half-loaded catalogue shows up as missing parts on the cutting list.
• Run the first few jobs against your own figures. Take a window you have built before, whose cut lengths you know, and compare the software's list with yours. Where they differ, find out why before you trust either. It is usually a deduction or glazing allowance set differently from the way your shop cuts, and it is fixed once in the catalogue, not on every job.
• Start simple. A fixed light, then an awning, then a sliding door. Add the corner and bay work once the basics match.

Once the first few jobs agree with your own numbers, the model becomes the one place the job is described, and the design step stops holding up the saw. That is what 3D design is for.