CAD plugin for UK traffic
signs and road markings
TSRGD zig-zags, zebra crossings, yellow boxes, chevrons and signs — drawn as plain CAD entities on the drawing you already have. No custom objects, no CAD reconfiguration, installed and active in minutes.
Some of the commands CapCad has to offer
Street View integration
Open Street View at any point of the drawing — with UK coordinate systems (OSGB British National Grid) supported natively, no conversion step.
Chevron design
Chevrons and hatched areas laid out from your geometry — spacing, angles and edge lines handled to diagram.
Handy reports
Lengths, areas and sign schedules extracted straight from the drawing, ready for Excel.
Pedestrian crossings, zig-zags & TSRGD compliance
Zebra and signal-controlled crossings with zig-zag terminals (diag 1001.3), drawn to TSRGD geometry.
Sign libraries and others
TSRGD sign placement from built-in libraries, plus your own blocks — and dozens more day-to-day commands.
A day-to-day drawing tool — not another platform
Everything it draws is normal CAD
Lines, polylines, hatches and blocks — edit them with the commands you already know. Colleagues without CapCad can open, measure and amend your drawings. No proprietary entities holding your project hostage.
Works with what you've drawn
Snap markings to your existing kerbs, channels and centrelines. No redrawing the road just to satisfy the software.
No IT ticket required
Installs and updates entirely in your user profile — no admin rights needed. CapCad doesn't touch your profiles, templates or CAD configuration: install it, use it, and your CAD is exactly as you left it.
Missing something? Ask
CapCad grows through its users. Most feature requests ship within days — and updates download in seconds while you work, when you choose. No reinstalls, ever.
What it draws
The full TSRGD horizontal repertoire, drawn to diagram geometry — plus placement of standard TSRGD signs. CapCad complements sign-face tools such as SignPlot; it doesn't replace them.
- Zig-zags (diag 1001.3)
- Zebra & pedestrian crossings
- Yellow box junctions (diag 1043–1044)
- Chevrons & hatched areas
- Stop & give-way lines
- Longitudinal lines
- Arrows, text & bays
- TSRGD sign placement
Missing a marking you need? Ask — most requests ship within days.
Your drawing, in the real world
Survey data, aerial imagery and terrain come into the drawing in your coordinate system, and go back out in whatever the next person needs.
Street View at any point
Click anywhere in the drawing and the panorama opens in a docked palette. The panorama's position and heading come back into the drawing as an arrow, and OSGB British National Grid is native, so there is no conversion step.
Open the survey you were sent
Shapefiles, KML, KMZ and GPX straight into the drawing. A shapefile's own .prj is read and reprojected for you, so you are not asked which system it was in.
Pull layers live from ArcGIS
Browse any ArcGIS REST server and query its layers straight into the drawing, already in the project's coordinate system.
OpenStreetMap in one step
Pick an area and get roads, buildings and boundaries as ordinary CAD geometry on sensible layers, a base to work over when there is no survey yet.
Terrain without waiting for a survey
Pick the area in the CAD and the SRTM tiles download themselves, with no account and no portal. You get a TIN surface with contours and sections, and a grade line to draw against.
Send it back out
Entities become KML, KMZ, GPX, GeoJSON or Esri JSON. Convert lists of coordinates in bulk, or reproject what is already drawn from one system to another.
And the hundred small things that eat your afternoon
The work around the work: spacing things out, tidying polylines, chasing layers and blocks, getting numbers out and corrections back in.
Divider Assistant
Walk a path and drop points, blocks or a repeated shape at regular stops: fixed spacing, equal divisions or a list of distances, with offset, rotation and live preview. Or cut the path into pieces.
Polyline and segment tools
Extract, break, lengthen and measure stretches of polylines and arcs. Add, remove and cycle vertices, strip redundant ones, and draw the average curve between two paths.
Blocks, attributes and placement
Export, clone, replace and check block definitions. Edit the attributes of one block or of every reference like it. Reference Placer butts one selection against another by its bounding box, so things line up without guesswork.
Colours and layers, in bulk
Paint every closed region of a map a different colour, by hatch or by layer. Convert layers wholesale, clear what sits on layers that are off or frozen, and unlock everything with one command.
Batch processing
Assemble a routine (purge, audit, bind xrefs, zoom extents, save) and run it across drawings instead of opening each one. Plus a deep multi-pass purge with an audit in the middle.
Ask the drawing a question
CapChat takes a question about the open drawing, has an AI write the AutoLISP for it and run it, and shows you the answer. Scope it to a selection; writing back asks first.
Entity report, and the way back
List every entity with the properties you choose (layer, XData, attributes, area, length), then group, sum and send it to Excel. Click a cell and it finds the entity in the CAD; fix the spreadsheet and the correction goes back into the blocks.
Dockable panels that watch the drawing
A grid with one row per entity and a chart of the distribution by category, so the quantity you are about to report is on screen while you draw, not discovered at the end.
Trusted by engineers worldwide
CapCad is in daily production use at consultancies, highway authorities and contractors worldwide.
After a free full first month, buy instantly if you wish
No quotes, no demos-before-pricing, no annual lock-in. Try it on a live job this afternoon.
Monthly
£30 / user / month
- All UK marking tools + sign placement
- First month free — no card needed
- Cancel anytime
- Updates & support included
Annual
£300 / user / year
- Everything in monthly
- One invoice for the year
- VAT invoice included
- Priority feature requests
Card checkout with automatic VAT receipts. Prefer a walkthrough first? Book a 30-minute demo.
Runs in the CAD you already use
One tool, six CAD platforms — full functionality on every one of them, so your licence is never tied to a single vendor. AutoCAD LT doesn't support add-ins — BricsCAD + CapCad is a popular lower-cost combination that still undercuts full AutoCAD on its own.
- AutoCAD
- Civil 3D
- BricsCAD
- ZWCAD
- GstarCAD
- ARES Commander
More platforms are on the roadmap.
Built around UK references
Markings are drawn to TSRGD diagram geometry, following Traffic Signs Manual guidance — so what leaves your drawing board is what checkers expect to see.
- TSRGD 2016
- DfT Traffic Signs Manual
- National Highways
- Local Highway Authorities
For you, with you
CapCad was born and grew through deep interaction with the end user — you — in real project situations. Questions, criticism, suggestions, bug reports, tweaks to existing commands or entirely new ones: most user requests ship within days, and they reach you as a background download while you work — no reinstall, no admin rights, no IT ticket.
Frequently asked questions
Does it need admin rights?
No. Installation and updates run entirely under your user account — nothing is written outside your user profile, and there's no IT ticket to raise.
Will it change my CAD setup?
No. CapCad loads as an add-in and leaves your profiles, templates and configuration untouched. Uninstall it and your CAD is exactly as it was.
Can colleagues without CapCad edit the output?
Yes. Everything CapCad draws is native CAD entities — lines, polylines, hatches and blocks — so anyone with a CAD seat can open, measure and amend the drawing.
Which CAD platforms are supported?
AutoCAD, Civil 3D, BricsCAD, ZWCAD, GstarCAD and ARES Commander — full functionality on all of them, and more platforms are on the roadmap. AutoCAD LT doesn't support add-ins of any kind — if you're on LT, BricsCAD + CapCad together cost less than a full AutoCAD seat.
How does buying work?
First month free with no card. After that it's £30 per user per month (or £300 a year) by card checkout, with automatic VAT invoices. Cancel anytime — no notice period, no phone call.
Who's behind CapCad?
CapCad is built by a former Transport for London engineer and has been in daily production use at consultancies and highway authorities across Brazil and Latin America — including international groups such as TPF and Egis.
Want to go deeper?
Learn at your own pace and connect with other CapCad users:
Authorized Developer
Autodesk Developer Network Register Number: 110001788464