Interface Overview

NullCad’s main window is organized around a central canvas viewport, surrounded by panels for layers, properties, tools, and phase status.

1. Menu bar — Standard menu bar for file operations, the view menu contains all windows for various features of the app.
2. Phase tabs — switch between the four survey phases (Setup/Search, Boundary Model, Reinstatement, Drafting). Each phase has independent camera state and status tracking; see Survey Phases.
3. Toolbar — grouped by category: Select, Draw, Modify, Survey, Measure, Surface & Drafting. See Drawing Tools and Modify Tools.
4. Sign In — sign in to your Nullstrom account, the current open file path is also displayed here.
5. Properties panel — inspect and edit the properties of the current selection.
6. Layer panel — create, rename, delete, and organize layers with groups; per-layer color, visibility, lock state, and line type. See Layers.
7. Tool Option panel — context-sensitive options for the currently active tool.
8. Canvas View menu — Toggle visibility of certain elements on the canvas; plans, images, comparisons, labels
9. Canvas viewport — the main drawing surface, rendered with a custom wgpu pipeline for precision at large coordinates (see Precision Handling).
10. Status bar — coordinates under the cursor, active tool, snap state.

Theme

NullCad is designed around the Nullstrom Design System shared across Nullstrom products. The default theme is a dark mode with high contrast and color-coded elements. A light mode is also available from View -> Settings -> Display. The canvas background is black regardless of the theme, to maximize contrast with survey data.

Distraction-free mode

Press F11 to hide the side panels and show a floating toolbox — useful when you want the canvas to take up the full window.

Settings

Application settings (point size, selection threshold, colors, line weight, label display, camera sensitivity, autosave interval, and more) are available from the Settings menu, organized into categories such as Settings ▸ Interaction and Settings ▸ Labels.

Recent files

The File menu keeps a list of recently opened projects for quick access.

View bookmarks

Save up to 9 camera positions and recall them instantly: