Coming from Plasticity
Hew for Plasticity users
The same direct-modeling conviction on a different foundation — faceted solids with curve memory instead of NURBS, free instead of licensed.
You know Plasticity: direct NURBS modeling on a real solids kernel, no constraint ceremony, booleans and fillets that just hold up. Hew shares the conviction — model the thing directly, keep it a valid solid at all times, make combining explicit — but sits on a different foundation. Hew’s solids are faceted meshes that remember their analytic curves (a drawn circle stays a true circle, and exports can re-facet it at any smoothness), not NURBS surfaces. You feel the difference at the edges: Hew has no fillet or chamfer tool, and its answer to edge profiles — sweeping a profile along an edge with Follow Me — is a coarser instrument than Plasticity’s filleting.
The workflow vocabulary is different too. Plasticity speaks the language of product design and concept art: surfacing, blends, control points. Hew speaks SketchUp: draw on a face, push/pull, inference snapping, typed lengths, and the furniture around building real objects — dimensions, tags, scenes, components with instances, printing templates at exact scale, an AR view on an iPhone or iPad.
Price and openness may or may not matter to you: Plasticity is a one-time license, which is already the sane end of CAD pricing; Hew is free, open source, and its file format is documented. If your work is surfacing-heavy product design, Plasticity is simply the better tool. If it’s woodworking, construction, or shop fixtures — flat faces, right angles, real dimensions — Hew’s toolset is aimed exactly there.
Feature comparison
| Plasticity | Hew | |
|---|---|---|
| Modeling philosophy | Direct, no history/constraints | Same — direct, undo-only history |
| Geometry kernel | NURBS solids (Parasolid) | Faceted watertight solids with analytic curve memory |
| Fillets & surfacing | A core strength | No fillet/chamfer tool; edge profiles via Follow Me sweeps |
| Price | One-time license, paid major upgrades | Free, AGPL-3.0 open source |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux, plus the full app in a browser |
| Precision & snapping | Numeric input, snapping | Typed unit-aware lengths, inference snapping, guides, dimensions |
| CAD interchange | STEP and Parasolid in/out | No STEP — .skp/COLLADA/glTF/STL in; STL/3MF/glTF/USDZ/SVG out |
| Documentation & organization | Minimal by design | Tags, scenes, outliner, dimensions, print to scale |
Where Plasticity heads into surfacing and Hew heads into shop drawings, the comparison stops being useful — they’re different rooms of the same direct-modeling house.