How to use Drafyx

What’s new in version 2

Version 2 adds more than thirty tools, and most of them run on your device. In the editor, the start screen shows the headline ones, and the Som menu › What’s new in version 2 lists them all, each a click away.

• 3D studio: read the drawing on the page into a 3D solid, or describe a part in words: orthopaedic implants, mechanical parts, tools, car and aircraft parts. It builds a real solid, checks it, and makes its drawing in first or third angle.
• Print check, Safety check, Sign & send, Translate, PDF → PowerPoint, Table → Excel, Scan to PDF, Word / Excel / text → PDF.
• Read & check: Ask the document, Number & date check, Glossary, Contract key terms, Readability, Accessibility check, Link check.
• Engineering: Measure, Fits & limits, Explain symbols, calculators, Tolerance heat map, Parts list check, Inspection results, Drawing register, ECN form, Mechanical check.
• Documents: Batch actions, Mail merge, Booklet / N-up, Bookmarks, PDF/A, Letterhead & templates, Quotation / certificate, Bank statement, Text compare.
• Easier to find: the rail keeps the everyday tools; the others are in the Engineering, Document and Read & check drawers. Press / to find any tool by name, and pin the ones you use.

Getting started

1. Sign up with your email or Google, and confirm your email. Then log in: the editor is for registered users.
2. Open a file: press Ctrl+O, or drop a PDF or a picture (PNG, JPEG, WebP, TIFF) anywhere in the window. Dropping a file onto an open document asks whether to open it in a new tab or merge it in.
3. Edit with the tools in the left rail.
4. Save: press Ctrl+S to download the edited PDF. The editor warns you before you close a tab with changes you have not downloaded.

Your files are opened and edited in your browser. They reach us only if you save them to My files; nothing else is kept.

Your account and plan

• Trial: log in and try the tools on our sample PDFs for 3 days. It is free.
• Pro ($9.99 a month) opens every tool on your own files. Pro + AI ($17.99 a month) adds AI help in every tool. Both are billed monthly; see Pricing.
• One login, one device: logging in on another device signs this one out, with a message saying why. Each person needs their own account.
• Your plan and sign-in are on your account page. The Som logo menu in the editor shows them too.

The editor screen

• Top bar: Open file, Merge files, Save, page number, 3D Viewer, Dual Viewer and the language.
• Som logo: a menu with every command, grouped and explained, with its shortcut. Alt opens it.
• Left rail: the free tools first, then the Pro and engineering tools. When they do not all fit, a rounded bar with an arrow at the bottom (or top) scrolls to the rest. A second click on a tool brings its settings back.
• Settings cards: drag a card by its title to move it, double-click the title to put it back. A soft orange glow at a card's bottom or top edge means there is more to scroll.
• Zoom: pinch on the touchpad, or Ctrl and the mouse wheel, in every view.
• Light and night themes, and 12 languages.

Text, shapes and pictures

Add and edit text

Add text boxes anywhere, with font, size, colour, bold and alignment. Edit existing content changes the PDF's own text, keeping its font, bold, italic and colour, also on scans (read with OCR). Double-click text on a scan to edit it; the style bar under it sets font, size, colour, bold, italic and a link. Ctrl+K adds a web, email or phone link to the selected text.

Shapes, drawing and stamps

Rectangles, circles, arrows, dimension lines, checks, clouds and more; free-hand pen, highlighter and eraser; approval stamps and your own. Select any shape to rotate (purple handle), resize (corners) or type exact values. Hold Shift to keep proportions or snap lines to 5°.

Pictures

Place a picture or logo, then select it for its Image settings: size, rotation, Enhance & filters and Remove background (AI for photos; plain backgrounds by colour).

Watermark, header and footer

Watermarks can have several lines and are placed by dragging the dashed preview. Header & footer adds page numbers, dates and Bates numbers to every page.

Pages, files and saving

• Pages: thumbnails to reorder, rotate, duplicate, delete or add blank pages; merge several PDFs and pictures.
• Cut / cover area removes a region of a page cleanly.
• Save menu: Download PDF, Save page, Compress PDF, Export page as picture, Export to Word, and the Pro items Make searchable (OCR) (an invisible text layer on scans), Export to JSON (text with positions, fonts, fields and links) and Protect with password (AES-256, with print, copy and edit permissions).
• Templates keep your stamps, header and footer, review rules and FAI headers for the next document.

Comments

Click 💬 Comments in the rail, or press C, then click on the page. Each comment shows your name, the date, replies, and Resolve / Delete; drag a pin to move it. To comment on one object, use 💬 on its row in Layers: the pin follows the object. Downloaded PDFs keep comments as standard PDF comments, so other readers show them; comments from other programs are imported when you open the file.

Spelling, summary, read aloud

• Spell & grammar (F7) uses a full English dictionary and shows what each fix will change; Fix all lists every change first.
• Summary recognises résumés, letters, invoices and reports and writes a summary from their facts. It uses rules, not an AI model.
• Read aloud reads any page in 15 natural voices (US and UK, female and male), following the layout: columns and boxes one after the other. Save the audio as WAV or MP3.

The natural voice engine downloads once, the first time you use it (about 320 MB), then stays in your browser.

Forms and signatures

Form fields adds fillable text fields, check boxes, date pickers and signature fields that work in any PDF reader. Click a signature field to draw, upload or type your signature, with your name and email printed under it if you like. Digital signatures sign the PDF with your certificate (.p12 / .pfx), and an audit report lists what was done.

Redact private data

Redact › Find all personal data marks emails, phone numbers, addresses and profile links; the drawing finders mark part and drawing numbers, names, customers and notes. Marks stay as striped outlines until you press Apply, which rebuilds the marked pages with black boxes, so the hidden text is gone from the file. Works on scans too.

Tax invoice

🧾 Tax invoice makes an invoice as a new PDF tab, with the details each country asks for: India (GST with CGST + SGST or IGST, GSTIN check, HSN / SAC, amount in words), the United States (sales tax by ship-to state), the United Kingdom (VAT invoice, tax point, reverse charge), Canada (GST / HST, PST, QST) and the European Union (VAT invoice, reverse charge, intra-Community supply). Rates are filled in and stay editable; it files nothing with any tax authority.

ATS résumé check

🎯 ATS résumé check compares a résumé with a job description the way applicant tracking systems do: a score out of 100 with its parts (keywords and skills, job title, experience, education, sections, layout), the keywords found and missing, and a list of what to improve. Use the open PDF also checks the layout (columns, pictures, scans).

Word, Excel, PowerPoint and scans

• Into PDF: open or drop .docx, .xlsx, .csv and .txt files like PDFs: headings, lists, tables, pictures and sheets come along. Scan to PDF (Document drawer) takes photos or the camera, finds the page (drag its corners to adjust), straightens it, evens the shadows and makes Document, black-and-white, colour or grey pages, with OCR if you want.
• Out of PDF: the Save menu has Word, Excel (the tables) and PowerPoint. PDF → PowerPoint builds an editable deck: sections become points, with pictures, tables, a chart, key figures and speaker notes that hold the source sentences.
• Table → Excel finds the tables on the pages and saves them as a workbook or CSV.

Safety check and hidden data

Hidden data (Document drawer) starts with a safety check: what the PDF would do in a reader that runs scripts and actions, said in plain words: scripts and what they do (send data, open web pages, run attached files, read your files, hidden code), programs it would start, form data it would send, files it carries and which of them can run programs, and links whose words name a different site from the one they open. The verdict is Risky, Be careful or Looks safe; Make a safe copy opens a copy without them.

Below it is everything the file carries besides its pages: author and software, XMP metadata and editing history, attachments, comments, form data, hidden layers, thumbnails, private application data and earlier versions kept by incremental saves. Tick what to remove and make a clean copy.

Drafyx never runs a PDF’s scripts. The safety check is a careful reading of the file, not an antivirus.

Print check

Print check (Document drawer) says whether a PDF is ready to print, for an office printer or a print shop. It looks at: printing allowed, page sizes and trim / bleed boxes, fonts embedded, the sharpness of every picture at the size it is placed (ppi), RGB, CMYK and spot colours, artwork that reaches the edge without bleed, text too near the edge, thin lines, tiny text, transparency and overprint, comments and form fields that will or will not print, and blank pages. Click a page chip to go there.

• Make a print-shop copy: each page on a larger sheet with bleed (3 mm, or what you set), crop marks, a slug line and trim and bleed boxes. When artwork reaches the edge it can stretch the page a little over the bleed.
• Flatten comments and fields: their appearance drawn into the page, so every printer shows them.

Sign & send

Sign & send takes a document from filling to sending: your details (remembered on this device), the fields to fill (empty and required ones counted), your signature on the page and / or a digital signature, flattening, a signing record page with the document’s SHA-256 before signing, an optional password, then Share, Download or an e-mail text. It is also in the Stamp tool and the Save menu.

Translate

Select a word, a line, an area or a paragraph and press Translate, or translate typed text, a page or the whole document: side by side, as Word, or as a translated PDF. It uses your browser’s built-in translator, or, with Pro + AI, our AI service; your corrections are remembered.

More document tools

• Text compare: what the words say differently between two versions, as a redline.
• Batch actions: the same steps (watermark, page numbers, a line of text, rotation, flattening forms, clearing properties, a file-name prefix) on many PDFs, as a zip or one PDF.
• Mail merge: a filled copy of a form for every row of a spreadsheet.
• Booklet / N-up: several pages per sheet, or a booklet to fold and staple.
• Bookmarks: bookmarks from the headings and a clickable contents page.
• PDF/A: a PDF/A-2b copy for long-term keeping.
• Letterhead & templates: your letterhead (from a PDF or a picture) behind each page, and templates: letter, offer, experience and salary certificates, NDA, purchase order, delivery note, notice.
• Quotation / certificate: quotations and certificates of conformance as PDFs.
• Bank statement: the transactions of a statement PDF, each row’s balance checked, a dashboard (in and out by month, categories, payees, repeating payments, charges, duplicates) and Excel.
• Form fields › Auto-place finds the blanks of everyday forms (underlines, typed underscores, labelled boxes, dates) and makes the right fields.

Ask, check and explain a document

• Ask the document: answers from the document, with the page each one comes from.
• Number & date check: totals, sums, percentages and dates that do not add up.
• Glossary: every acronym and term, with its meaning and where it is used.
• Contract key terms: parties, dates, renewal, notice periods, money and risky clauses.
• Readability: grade level, long sentences and passive voice.
• Accessibility check: tags, alternative text, contrast, language and reading order.
• Link check: broken links and jumps that land on the wrong page.

They read the text on your device; with Pro + AI, AI help can reword, and every sentence it writes is checked against the document.

Dimension Inspector and CN balloons

For engineering drawings and first article inspection. Open a drawing and press Scan page: dimensions such as 25.00, Ø25.4, R5, M6, 4X, ±0.05, (25), 120° and GD&T frames are read from the PDF text, or by OCR on scans. Place puts a numbered CN balloon beside each one without covering the text.

• Edit a value in the list and the drawing updates. Every balloon can be dragged, resized, recoloured and renumbered.
• Numbering across revisions: balloon data is saved inside the PDF; reopened, numbering continues where you stopped and dimensions that have balloons are skipped.
• Detect bubbles finds balloons already on a drawing, in any colour.
• Revision: reads the revision table and writes the next row and title-block letter for you.
• FAI report exports the list to Excel with a live pass / fail formula, or CSV.

Drawing review

✓ Drawing review (R) checks a drawing against ASME Y14.5 (2018, 2009 or 1994): feature control frames, datums, tolerance values, completeness, notes and spelling. It also checks the drawing against itself:

• Title block revision against the revision table
• “Sheet n of N” against the sheets of the drawing
• Sign-off dates in order
• Gear data (d = m × z, tip, root, base circle) and helix lead
• Keyway depth to DIN 6885
• The same feature given different values (PCD, pin, point angle)
• Heat treatment that does not suit the material
• Hole position without Ø
• Parts list against notes, balloons and fastener counts
• Dimension chains longer than the overall size
• Cylindricity against an oval or barrel note
• Section views without their cutting plane

Every finding has its rule, a suggested fix and Accept / Ignore / False positive; the report saves as Excel or PDF. It reads text, not geometry, and never states that a drawing complies.

Compare revisions

• Dual Viewer: two documents side by side; each pane zooms and pages on its own and has the same tools as the main page.
• Overlay: one revision over the other, the old in cyan and the new in magenta, with auto-align.
• Change report: what changed in words (“120 changed to 125”, a hole added, a note rewritten), saved as PDF or CSV; it can carry the CN balloons over to the new revision and number new dimensions after the last one.

Tolerance stack-up

∑ Tolerance stack-up (K): pick dimensions from the Inspector's list (or type them), set each direction, and see the gap by worst case and by RSS with the formulas written out, PASS / FAIL against your minimum and maximum. Asymmetric tolerances are centred first. Export a PDF report or Excel with live formulas.

3D Viewer

🧊 3D Viewer shows a model beside the drawing: STEP, IGES, BREP, STL, OBJ, 3MF, glTF, FBX, PLY, Collada, 3DS, VRML and more, and NX parts (.prt) without NX. For SolidWorks, Inventor, Solid Edge, CATIA and Creo, export STEP or STL first. Click a feature to find it on the drawing.

• 📏 Measure: a surface's area, a round face's diameter, the distance or angle between two surfaces.
• ⚖ Mass: volume, area, centre of mass and weight in over 130 materials.
• 📷 Snapshot: places the view on the drawing where you click.

Product map

⧉ Product map (P) maps a product: assemblies, parts, suppliers, documents, processes and shop-floor shapes, linked with arrows and laid out automatically. Blocks carry revision and quantity badges and can link to a drawing page or a 3D model. Export as picture or PDF, or insert it into the document.

3D studio

The 3D studio (Engineering drawer) is one window for 3D parts:

• Read the drawing on this page (or say “read this drawing”): the views, line types, hatching, dimensions, data tables (gear teeth, drill flutes) and title block are read and the part is built in 3D. Change the part type, projection, scale or any feature on the right, or in words (“turned part”, “scale 1:2”, “turn off the fillet”); Show on the page marks in green what agrees with the drawing. Assembly drawings are recognised.
• Say what to build: about a hundred ready designs, by field (say “all parts” to see them): orthopaedic implants (knee femoral component, total knee, patella, hip stem, cup and total hip, shoulder, bone plates and screws, nails, wires, spine screws, rods, cages and plates, anchors, staples, dental implants), mechanical parts (ISO bolts, screws, nuts, washers, studs, pins, keys, circlips, springs, bearings, gears of every kind, sprockets, pulleys, couplings, cams, levers, handwheels, hinges, steel sections, pipe fittings), tools (drills, end mills, reamers, taps, turning tools, spanners, hex keys, screwdrivers, hammers, chisels), car parts (piston, connecting rod, crankshaft, camshaft, valves, brakes, wheels, springs, dampers, knuckle…) and aircraft parts (wings and ribs, spars, frames, blades, disks, propellers, nozzles, nose cones, tanks, brackets, a CubeSat frame). A word that names two parts asks which (“femoral”: knee or hip). Anything else can be described by its shapes and sizes: “a block 80 × 40 × 20 with 2 holes Ø8”.
• It asks for what is missing (or tap You decide), builds a real solid with a CAD engine in your browser, checks it, and takes changes in plain words (“bore 60”, “size 5”, “8 holes”).
• Drawing: first or third angle, with the views, sizes, notes and title block, as PDF (opens in the editor), DXF or SVG. Files: STEP, STL and a FreeCAD macro. Open 3D model brings in a STEP file from your CAD program and draws it.

The first use downloads the CAD engine (about 22 MB) once. Models are design starting points: see the honest limits below.

Measure, fits and calculators

• Measure (M): the scale is read from the title block, or calibrated on a known length. Distance (D), path (P), area (A), angle (G), circle (R, one click on a drawn circle) and count (N); snaps to line ends and circle centres; CSV and Add to PDF.
• Fits & limits: ISO 286 limits (up to 500 mm, IT1–IT16) for the H7 / g6 callouts found on the page, written on the PDF.
• Engineer’s calculators: threads and tap drills, bolt torque (ISO 898-1), weight, bend allowance, hardness conversion, units.

Explain symbols and the heat map

• Explain symbols: outlines every callout with a meaning; click for GD&T frames in words (zone, datums, modifiers), fits with their limits, threads, hole callouts, surface finish, ISO 2768 and notes.
• Tolerance heat map: every dimension coloured by the IT grade of its tolerance for its size, with the usual process; untoleranced sizes from ISO 2768; surface finish coloured too.

Parts list, inspection, register, ECN

• Parts list check: the balloons on every sheet against the parts list: orphan balloons, rows without balloons, duplicates, quantities and notes naming unlisted items; Excel / CSV.
• Inspection results: a CMM CSV (or the template) matched by CN number; pass / fail marked on the drawing, Cp / Cpk, and an Excel report with live pass / fail.
• Drawing register: the title blocks of many PDFs in one table, with sheet counts, mixed and older revisions and part numbers without a drawing flagged.
• ECN form: the change report, comments and markups made into an ECN (as its own PDF or added to the drawing).

Mechanical check

Mechanical check reads diameters, threads, fits, keys, Morse tapers, drill / reamer sizes and the material from the drawing, then checks a shaft on two bearings or a cantilever: reactions, shear force, bending moment, torque and deflection diagrams, von Mises stress, yield and fatigue safety, bearing slopes and twist. Also torque from power, bolt preload and torque, DIN 6885 keys, press fits (ISO 286) and Morse taper against drilling or reaming torque, with the equations shown and a PDF report.

Shortcuts

Press ? in the editor for this list and every tool, with a search box.

Privacy and security

• Every tool processes your files in your browser, dimension reading, Drawing review, the change report, Drawing → 3D and the 3D studio’s CAD engine included. A file reaches us only if you save it to My files; AI help (Pro + AI) sends the text it works on to our AI service, which does not keep it. Our account service knows only your login, your plan and which Pro tools you opened.
• A strict security policy blocks scripts, frames and connections to other sites; the only outside connection is to our account service.
• PDFs are opened with their JavaScript turned off, which protects against attacks hidden in fonts (such as CVE-2024-4367).
• Some tools download their engines from our website the first time you use them; your documents are not sent with them. See the privacy policy.

Honest limits

• OCR runs on your computer, not in a cloud. Better OCR is clearly more accurate than the basic engine but slower, and Ø can be read as 0 in plain text (the Inspector repairs it in dimensions). Low-resolution, rotated or very crowded drawings may need a manual pass.
• Dimension reading and drawing review are based on the text, not the geometry: scale, projection and missing dimensions are not checked.
• Summary and the ATS check use rules, not an AI model: check that nothing important is missing.
• Balloon data is stored only in files saved from this editor.
• The change report lists dimensions and notes; a callout without a value (such as a removed slot) may not be listed.
• Natural voices and AI tools are slower in a browser than in a native program, and the first use downloads their engine.
• 3D studio: the ready designs and the models read from drawings are design starting points. They follow the usual sizes of each field, but they are not certified parts: check every size, tolerance and material, and for implants and other medical devices, flight hardware and safety-critical parts follow your own design controls, standards and approvals before any use. Threads are shown as rings (the true helix is made for files when asked), and drawings of complex parts use a quick drawing method with fine polylines.
• Print check does not measure total ink coverage or convert colours with ICC profiles: ask your print shop for their requirements. Safety check is not an antivirus.
• Translate uses your browser’s translator or, with Pro + AI, our AI service; have important translations checked by a person.

Licences and trademarks

Every open-source part of Drafyx allows commercial use (MIT, BSD, Apache-2.0, ISC, zlib; three parts under the LGPL, the STEP/IGES reader, the CAD engine (Open CASCADE, in the 3D studio) and the MP3 encoder, whose source is available on request). The full notices are in the editor under Help › Licences. The natural voices (Kokoro) are Apache-2.0.

NX, JT and Solid Edge are trademarks of Siemens; SolidWorks and CATIA of Dassault Systèmes; Inventor of Autodesk; Creo of PTC. The names only say which files open; Drafyx is not made or endorsed by these companies.

Troubleshooting

The editor sends me to the login page

The editor needs a login. If it says your account was used on another device, log in again here; the other device is then signed out.

A tool says its engine is loading

The first use downloads it once (OCR about 25 MB, the 3D studio’s CAD engine about 22 MB, natural voices about 320 MB). Keep the tab open until it finishes.

The 3D studio takes a while on a big part

Complex parts (many teeth, blades, implants) take a few seconds to build; the panel shows each step. Smooth surfaces for files and drawings take longer than the preview.

Large files feel slow

Use Compress PDF, close unused tabs, or zoom out while working.

Still stuck?

Write to us from the contact page.