🗳️ Community poll: what should we build next in dxf-render / dxf-vuer / dxf-react / dxf-lit?

Hey everyone! The dxf-render engine and its framework wrappers — dxf-vuer (Vue 3), dxf-react (React 18+) and dxf-lit (a <dxf-viewer> Web Component usable from Angular / Svelte / vanilla) — share one long roadmap, and I'd love to hear from you which features matter most for your use cases.

Most features land in the shared engine (and the dxf-interaction layer) and ship across all three wrappers at once, so your vote counts no matter which one you use.

1. Leave a comment with your top 3 features (just paste the IDs, e.g. R-1, I-1, UI-3).
2. Briefly describe your use case — it helps us prioritize features that solve real problems.

Viewing only for now — DXF editing is explicitly out of scope.

🎨 Rendering — more DXF coverage

New entity types

• R-1 · IMAGE / WIPEOUT — raster images embedded in DXF (parser ready, needs render)
• R-2 · 3DSOLID — ACIS solids (at least wireframe / bounding box)
• R-3 · VIEWPORT — render model-space content inside paper-space viewports
• R-4 · TABLE (ACAD_TABLE) — tables with cells and styles
• R-5 · TOLERANCE — GD&T feature control frames
  ✔️ R-6 · REGION — 2D regions, rendered by borrowing the bounding HATCH's boundary edges (done in dxf-render 1.6.0)

Existing entity improvements

• R-7 · SHX fonts — AutoCAD SHX support (conversion or custom parser)
• R-8 · Vertical text — TEXT/MTEXT with vertical flow direction
• R-9 · Bidirectional text — correct RTL ordering (Arabic, Hebrew)
• R-10 · Full DIMSTYLE coverage — all DIMSTYLE variables
• R-11 · Full MLINESTYLE — fills, end caps, joints
• R-12 · Gradient HATCH — gradient fills (currently solid + patterns only)
• R-19 · CJK / Unicode font fallback — fallback chain (e.g. Noto Sans SC/JP/KR) in glyph triangulation; today unknown glyphs render as ?
• R-20 · Draw order (SORTENTSTABLE) — honor source order / SORTENTSTABLE so thick polyline / SOLID meshes can sit above thin lines
• R-21 · MTEXT \T and \A inline codes — character tracking (\T<n>;) and baseline shift (\A<n>;) for inline sub/superscript; parser currently swallows them with no visual effect

Paper Space / Layouts

• R-13 · Layout switching — toggle between Model Space and Paper Space
• R-14 · Title blocks & sheets — borders, title blocks, sheet scales
• R-15 · Layout selector prop/component

DWG support

• R-16 · DWG parsing — DWG → DXF via WASM lib (LibreDWG / ODA File Converter) or a native binary parser
• R-17 · Format auto-detection — detect DWG/DXF by file signature and handle transparently
• R-18 · DWG version coverage — R14 / 2000 / 2004 / 2007 / 2010 / 2013 / 2018

⚡ Performance & scalability

• P-1 · Streaming parser — incremental parsing for large DXFs (>50 MB)
• P-2 · Level of Detail (LOD) — geometry simplification at low zoom
• P-3 · Frustum culling — skip off-screen objects
• P-4 · GPU instancing — InstancedMesh for mass INSERT blocks
• P-5 · Lazy block loading — defer rendering blocks outside viewport
• P-6 · Memory optimization — BufferGeometry reuse, proper dispose on file switch
• P-7 · Progressive rendering — show partial scene during load

🧭 Navigation & interaction

Camera

• N-1 · Minimap — overview navigator in the corner
• N-2 · Named views navigation — jump to VPORT / Named Views from DXF
  ✔️ N-3 · Zoom to selection — viewer.zoomToEntity(handles[]) (done in dxf-vuer 2.5.0)
  ✔️ N-4 · Zoom to layer extents — viewer.zoomToLayer(layerName) + getZoomBoxForLayer() (done in dxf-vuer 2.6.0)
• N-5 · Navigation history — undo/redo camera positions
• N-6 · Animated transitions — smooth camera tweens on fit/zoom

Measurements & info

✔️ I-1 · Distance measurement tool — ruler between two points (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
✔️ I-2 · Area measurement — closed region (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
✔️ I-3 · Angle measurement (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
✔️ I-4 · Snap to geometry — vertices, midpoints, centers (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
✔️ I-5 · Entity inspector — entity-click event with { handle, type, layer, text?, entity?, association? } (done in dxf-vuer 2.5.0)
✔️ I-6 · Attribute search — findEntitiesByText(dxf, query) across TEXT/MTEXT/ATTRIB/ATTDEF/DIMENSION/MULTILEADER (done in dxf-render 1.4.0)
✔️ I-7 · Search by layer / type — findEntitiesByLayer(dxf, layerName) and findEntitiesByType(dxf, type | type[]) return handles, symmetric with findEntitiesByText (done in dxf-render 1.5.0)

Selection

✔️ S-1 · Click to select — pickingEnabled prop, entity-click event, built-in highlight overlay (done in dxf-vuer 2.5.0)

✔️ S-2 · Rectangle selection — marquee select (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
✔️ S-3 · Layer hover highlight — emphasize all entities on layer hover (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)

• S-4 · Spatial association heuristic — heuristic association of leader/dimension to the nearest geometry pointed to by the arrow (optional flag, experimental — DXF does not store this association)
  ✔️ S-5 · Precise selection highlight — highlight by real entity geometry instead of the entity's bounding box (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
  ✔️ S-6 · ACAD_GROUP associations — emit group associations from the ACAD_GROUP dictionary (requires OBJECTS-section parsing) (done in dxf-render 1.7.0)

Bonus shipped in dxf-render 1.4.0 / dxf-vuer 2.5.0 (not originally in the poll): Semantic associations — buildAssociations(dxf) derives MULTILEADER, LEADER↔TEXT (DXF 340), INSERT+ATTRIB and DIMENSION groups strictly from DXF data; events and the built-in highlight automatically expand to all members.

Bonus shipped in dxf-render 1.6.0 (not originally in the poll): Standard arrowhead blocks — all 18 standard AutoCAD arrowhead names (closed-filled, open, datum, dots, ticks, boxes, origin, integral, none) honoured at DIMENSION endpoints and LEADER tips via DIMSTYLE codes 342/341 and $DIMBLK. MTEXT scoped formatting — inline { … } push/pop format scope plus \W<n>; / \Q<n>; width/oblique runs. DIMSTYLE accuracy — DIMCLRD/DIMCLRE/DIMCLRT, DIMTIH/DIMTOH, DIMDEC/$DIMADEC, architectural fractions, radial state machine, outside-arrow flip for short dim lines. STYLE.widthFactor, correct binary-DXF rejection, layer flag bit 2.

🖼️ UI & UX

Panels

✔️ UI-1 · Properties panel — details of the selected entity (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)

• UI-2 · Blocks panel — list all INSERT blocks with navigation
• UI-3 · Text/dim style panel — overview of styles in use
• UI-4 · Extended statistics — charts of entity/layer distribution
• UI-5 · Breadcrumbs — Layout > Block > Entity path
• UI-6 · Context menu — right-click → Zoom to / Properties / Copy coords
  ✔️ UI-7 · Rulers — horizontal & vertical rulers around the canvas with adaptive tick scale, pan/zoom-synced ticks, optional showRulers / rulerUnits props and a cursor marker (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)

Layer panel

✔️ L-1 · Layer search filter — text filter by layer name (done in dxf-vuer 2.4.0)

✔️ L-2 · Layer grouping — auto-group by prefix (A-WALL, A-DOOR → group A) (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)

• L-3 · Drag-and-drop layer order
  ✔️ L-4 · Persist visibility — remember layer state across sessions (localStorage) (done in dxf-vuer 2.6.0)
• L-5 · Visibility presets — quick configs ("architecture only", "electrical only")

Toolbar

• T-1 · Button groups — visual separators between groups

Styling

✔️ UI-8 · Stable class hooks — single-class, low-specificity selectors (e.g. .dxf-viewer-toolbar) documented as public CSS hooks so user CSS / Tailwind @apply reliably wins over defaults (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
✔️ UI-9 · classes prop (Headless UI-style) — a map of class overrides per named element: { toolbar, layerPanel, loadingSpinner, errorOverlay, … }; covers Tailwind / utility-CSS users without going full headless (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)

📤 Export & integration

Export

• E-1 · SVG export — vector export of visible layers
• E-2 · PDF export — preserving scale and layers
• E-3 · PNG export options — resolution, DPI, transparent background
• E-4 · Copy to clipboard — screenshot current view

Print

• E-5 · Print layout — print prep with border and scale
• E-6 · Print-friendly CSS — @media print styles

Loading

✔️ E-7 · Load from ArrayBuffer / Blob — file-storage integration (done in dxf-vuer 2.4.0)

• E-8 · Authenticated URL loading — custom headers on URL fetch
• E-9 · .dxf.gz support — auto gzip decompression

♿ Accessibility

✔️ A-1 · ARIA attributes — aria-label on all controls (done in dxf-vuer 2.6.0)

• A-2 · Keyboard navigation — Tab/Enter/Space across UI
  ✔️ A-3 · Keyboard pan/zoom — arrows to pan, +/- to zoom (done in dxf-vuer 2.6.0)

• A-4 · Screen reader announcements — loading, errors, layer changes

• A-5 · Focus management — visible focus, correct tab order
  ✔️ A-6 · prefers-reduced-motion — disable TAA and transitions (done in dxf-vuer 2.4.0)

• A-7 · High contrast mode — Windows High Contrast support

🧩 API & extensibility

DXFViewer

✔️ API-1 · v-model for layer visibility — two-way binding (done in dxf-vuer 3.0.0)
✔️ API-2 · Events: entity-click / entity-hover — with entity data and association (done in dxf-vuer 2.5.0)
✔️ API-3 · Programmatic API — viewer.zoomToEntity(handles[]), viewer.highlight(handles[]), viewer.clearHighlight(), viewer.getAssociations(), viewer.findAssociationsByHandle(), viewer.getPickingIndex() (done in dxf-vuer 2.5.0)

• API-4 · Plugin system — register custom entity renderers

Other

• API-5 · Headless mode — server-side rendering (Node + headless GL) for thumbnails
  ✔️ API-6 · React wrapper — dxf-react on top of dxf-render (done in dxf-react 0.1.0)
  ✔️ API-7 · Web Component on Lit — <dxf-viewer> custom element built with Lit; one package usable from React/Angular/Svelte/vanilla via native DOM (props as attributes, events as CustomEvent, slots like Vue) (done in dxf-lit 0.1.0)

✅ Quality

• Q-1 · Visual snapshot tests — reference DXF vs. rendered image diff
• Q-2 · Parser fuzz testing — resilience to malformed DXF
• Q-3 · Performance benchmarks — 1 MB / 10 MB / 50 MB files
• Q-4 · E2E tests — Playwright for core scenarios
• Q-5 · Storybook / Histoire — interactive component catalog
• Q-6 · API Reference — auto-generated from TSDoc
• Q-7 · Reference DXF suite — compatibility across AutoCAD / BricsCAD / LibreCAD / QCAD
• Q-8 · Migration guide — upgrade documentation between major versions
• Q-9 · Integration examples — Nuxt, Vite, webpack, CDN starter recipes
• Q-10 · Compatibility report — automated render diff against an AutoCAD reference set

💡 Missing something?

If your must-have isn't listed, just comment below!

Thanks for helping shape the roadmap!