NullCad
A 2D CAD application for cadastral surveying. Search, boundary model, reinstatement and drafting live in one document, over an operation log that records how the plan reached its current state.
The whole job in one document.
Search plans, imagery, the boundary model and the drafting sit in the same file. The nullcad file holds all the files internally and is fully portable. With Pro, background maps from WMS servers add live imagery for additional context.
Four phases, one file.
A survey job moves through recognisable stages, and the interface follows. Each phase keeps its own camera and its own status, all geometry can be moved between phases or in multiple phases at once.
- Setup / Search
- The virtual desk. Drop scanned plans, PDFs and imagery into the viewport and lay them out the way you would spread them across a desk. They stay embedded in the project file.
- Boundary Model
- Build the model from the plans: traverse entry from bearings and distances, snapping against what is already there, and the plans in view beside the geometry they describe.
- Reinstatement
- Your final geometry and calculations. Compare field measurements against the boundary model and resolve the differences on the record.
- Drafting
- Sheets and viewports behave as any other geometry, they can be moved and rotated to lay out as you need.
Bearings and distances by default.
All tools take bearings in HP format. Distances can be entered in plane and are automatically converted to grid through the global (or custom) CSF keeping the whole document in one projection.
- Traverse tool
- Enter each leg as a bearing and distance to create connected traverses, with the combined scale factor applied as you go. Side shots can be easily entered as you go making boundary models a breeze.
- Comparison tool
- Compare a field measurement against the original plan: comparisons are a first class object that show in the viewport, colour coded, draggable, simple.
- Measure
- Distances and bearings between any points, in the projection the job lives in. When a CSF is set, all distances are shown in both plane and grid.
- Snapping
- Endpoint, midpoint, nearest, intersection, perpendicular, grid and angle constraints in addition to active average snapping.
Built to be checked.
Nullcad is designed to make checking a job easy. Every operation is saved and can be checked for errors. The operation log holds a record of every modification to the geometry, from import to plan.
- Full 64-bit, end to end
- Full 64-bit precision for all calculations, enough to calculate positions anywhere on the planet to a fraction of a millimeter.
- Grid first
- Data stays in the projection it was measured in. No scaling needed so coordinates are correct even while distances are shown in plane.
- An append-only log
- Every edit is an operation appended to a log that saves with the document keeping the whole document auditable. Checking what has happened to a point since it was imported is as easy as selecting it.
- Nothing is really deleted
- Deleted geometry is tombstoned, not removed, so the history of a figure survives the figure and is fully recoverable even weeks later.
From canvas to sheet.
- Pages and viewports
- ISO A-series, US, ANSI and ARCH sheets at a chosen draw scale. Viewports window content from other phases with independent navigation and layer visibility.
- Vector PDF export
- Geometry is transformed to paper millimetres, styled per layer, clipped, and written as vector paths — text as glyph outlines, underlays embedded beneath. The exported sheet matches the canvas.
- TIN surfaces
- Triangulated surfaces from selected points using constrained Delaunay, with hard and soft breaklines, contours built-in and exportable. Non-destructive — source points are untouched.
- Complex linetypes
- Custom linetypes that carry text and shapes within the pattern, per layer or per geometry. A custom definition language makes it simple to create new styles.
Your data stays inspectable.
- The .nullcad archive
- A project file is a ZIP archive: geometry, the operation log, settings, and embedded resources — plans, photos, field data. Full autosave functionality available.
- Native import/export
- Shapefile, DXF (with native circles and arcs), GeoJSON, and CSV with configurable column mapping.
- CodelistsPro
- Manage codelists to keep your geometry automatically organised on the correct layer. Imported geometry respects codelists so a csv is organised as soon as it imports.
- Web viewer bundle
- Export a self-contained .ncweb bundle for the companion browser viewer — the model and its resources, viewable on a phone in the field with background maps.
Fully Scriptable
- Lua pluginsPro
- Extend NullCad with Lua 5.4: menu commands, interactive canvas tools, panels and event-driven automation. Script edits flow through the operation system, so they stay undoable and audited.
- MCP server
- An in-process Model Context Protocol server lets an AI agent read and create geometry in the open document. Its edits take the same path as yours: the operation log, undo and redo.
Need more detail?
docs.nullcad.io covers the interface, the survey workflow, drafting and output, import and export, the plugin API, and the .nullcad file format.
Stay accountable
Nullcad Core is free and does not require an account; the advanced features — WMS basemaps, Lua plugins and codelists — require an active Pro subscription. Signing in also stamps your edits in the document's operation log with your identity instead of local, so a document touched by several hands can still be audited.
Accounts are created and managed here; the app itself only signs in.
NullCad is built byNullstrom, alongside the Nullfield Calculator — software for land and engineering surveyors, from Hobart, Australia.