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VanCADdocs

Getting started

VanCAD is a 3D design tool for planning a camper van conversion. You start from a real base van, place components inside it, arrange them until the layout works, and read off what you have built: a bill of materials and a running total of added weight.

Everything in the app hangs off that loop, and this section is the orientation for it - what is on screen, what the app does for you while you learn, and how much editing time a free session gives you.

VanCAD runs in a web browser, with nothing to install, and building needs a free account. The mobile app is a viewer for designs you have already made.

The app is in English, and it asks your browser not to translate it. Automatic translation rewrites the words on a page while the app is still using them, which used to make VanCAD stop with an error part-way through a design. The rest of this site is unaffected: these pages, the guides and the van specifications all translate normally, so you can read them in your own language.

The Get started screen

Section titled “The Get started screen”

Signing in without a design in progress lands you on Get started, which offers the two ways into the app: Explore the Demo Vans, a read-only gallery of finished builds, and Build your own, which takes you to the van picker. Starting a new build is free, so this screen never asks you to pay to get past it.

If you have subscribed before and your subscription has since lapsed, the screen also says how many saved designs are waiting. Pressing that line opens Your designs over it, where each one is listed by name and marked Locked - they are kept on your account rather than deleted, and they open as they did before once a subscription is active again. Closing the list returns you here. See Saving and loading.

What is in this section

Section titled “What is in this section”
  • The workspace - a labelled map of the screen: the toolbar along the top, the Object List and the Inspector at the sides, the catalogue, the van-state switcher, and the 3D view itself.
  • Tutorials and help - the three ways the app explains itself: the guided tutorials, the hover help overlay, and the Updates list.
  • Sessions and limits - the session timer, what happens when a free session runs out, and what a subscription changes.
Section titled “Related”
  • Guides: in-depth walkthroughs - the same ground as worked examples, from picking a van to reading the build sheet.
  • Tutorial: Quick User Interface Guide, in the app under Tutorials.