# CADENA: Stepwise CAD Reverse Engineering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.00799 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00799/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 52 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Aug 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 52)

- [DeepCAD: A Deep Generative Network for Computer-Aided Design Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09492/) (2021)
- [SkexGen: Autoregressive Generation of CAD Construction Sequences with Disentangled Codebooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04632/) (2022)
- [BrepGen: A B-rep Generative Diffusion Model with Structured Latent Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15563/) (2024)
- [CAD-MLLM: Unifying Multimodality-Conditioned CAD Generation With MLLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04954/) (2024)
- [SolidGen: An Autoregressive Model for Direct B-rep Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13944/) (2022)
- [UCSG-Net -- Unsupervised Discovering of Constructive Solid Geometry Tree](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09102/) (2020)
- [SketchGen: Generating Constrained CAD Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02711/) (2021)
- [Vitruvion: A Generative Model of Parametric CAD Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.14124/) (2021)
- [CAD-Recode: Reverse Engineering CAD Code from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14042/) (2024)
- [CAPRI-Net: Learning Compact CAD Shapes with Adaptive Primitive Assembly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05652/) (2021)
- [Point2Cyl: Reverse Engineering 3D Objects from Point Clouds to Extrusion Cylinders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09329/) (2021)
- [CAD-Coder: Text-to-CAD Generation with Chain-of-Thought and Geometric Reward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19713/) (2025)
- [Inferring CAD Modeling Sequences Using Zone Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03900/) (2021)
- [SECAD-Net: Self-Supervised CAD Reconstruction by Learning Sketch-Extrude Operations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10613/) (2023)
- [CAD-Coder: An Open-Source Vision-Language Model for Computer-Aided Design Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14646/) (2025)
- [D2CSG: Unsupervised Learning of Compact CSG Trees with Dual Complements and Dropouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11497/) (2023)
- [CAD-Assistant: Tool-Augmented VLLMs as Generic CAD Task Solvers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13810/) (2024)
- [ExtrudeNet: Unsupervised Inverse Sketch-and-Extrude for Shape Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15632/) (2022)
- [HoLa: B-Rep Generation using a Holistic Latent Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14257/) (2025)
- [CadVLM: Bridging Language and Vision in the Generation of Parametric CAD Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17457/) (2024)
- [CAD-Editor: A Locate-then-Infill Framework with Automated Training Data Synthesis for Text-Based CAD Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03997/) (2025)
- [CME-CAD: Heterogeneous Collaborative Multi-Expert Reinforcement Learning for CAD Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.23333/) (2025)
- [Split-and-Fit: Learning B-Reps via Structure-Aware Voronoi Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.05261/) (2024)
- [AutoBrep: Autoregressive B-Rep Generation with Unified Topology and Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03018/) (2025)
- [cadrille: Multi-modal CAD Reconstruction with Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22914/) (2025)
- [BenchCAD: A Comprehensive, Industry-Standard Benchmark for Programmatic CAD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10865/) (2026)
- [Neural Shape Parsers for Constructive Solid Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11393/) (2019)
- [BrepGPT: Autoregressive B-rep Generation with Voronoi Half-Patch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22171/) (2025)
- [Text2CAD-Bench: A Benchmark for LLM-based Text-to-Parametric CAD Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18430/) (2026)
- [Pointer-CAD: Unifying B-Rep and Command Sequences via Pointer-based Edges & Faces Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04337/) (2026)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [CADFather: Autonomous CAD Reconstruction through Coordinated Tool Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.09127/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) underpins modern engineering, yet converting existing shapes into editable models still demands substantial expert effort. Most AI systems emit the entire CAD program in a single pass, never inspecting the intermediate geometry. In contrast, human engineers build a part feature by feature, checking after each operation what remains to be modeled. We introduce CADENA (Spanish for "chain"), a model that reconstructs a 3D mesh as a parametric CAD program, growing its sequence of operations one at a time and comparing the target with the currently predicted geometry at every step. We also address the lack of benchmarks for evaluating reverse-engineering methods on mechanical parts, introducing CADENA-Bench, a benchmark that measures performance across categories of mechanical parts. CADENA outperforms prior methods on CADENA-Bench and on the DeepCAD, Fusion 360, and MCB datasets. Code is available at https://github.com/zhemdi/cadena, model weights at https://huggingface.co/kulibinai/cadena, and CADENA-Bench at https://huggingface.co/datasets/kulibinai/cadena-bench.