Content
CLASS 1 — Native features – 2h
What you will have ready after this class: a quantity takeoff table generated from the your drawing. The AI features already installed in your ZWCAD — which most users have never opened. You will learn to:
- Find all identical symbols on a sheet, even at different scales, angles and mirror orientations
- Convert everything into blocks at once — turning files received from third parties into organized drawings
- Generate the quantity takeoff table directly in the drawing: a material list from a sheet that did not contain a single block
- Reuse blocks already in your collection, instead of redrawing them
- Separate AI from marketing — what is real intelligence and what is just an algorithm with a fancy name. This applies to any software, not just ZWCAD
- ⭐ Know what NOT to automate, because ZWCAD already handles it out of the box
With live exercises on your own drawing.
CLASS 2 — How to create and automate processes with AI – 2h
What you will have ready after this class: your own routine, running in your ZWCAD and solving the problem you noted in Class 1. You will install an AI tool developed for ZWCAD and create your first automation — without writing a single line of code. In this class you will learn to:
- Describe the problem in everyday language and let the AI conduct the interview: it asks about what you have not explained before writing anything
- Check the assumptions — the AI shows what you provided and what it decided for you before building. Nothing is added silently
- ⭐ Run the correction cycle — load it in ZWCAD, test, correct, repeat. What you learn here is the method, not the code
- ⭐ Use test mode — every version explains what it did and saves a log that you return to the AI for correction. You approve it when it works the way you want
- Recognize well-built automation — options window, built-in help, memory of the last configuration, ESC handling and undo with a single Ctrl+Z
- ⭐ Decide how to distribute it — open code runs in any CAD, but anyone can read it; encryption protects it, but it only opens in ZWCAD. There is no way back
With your automation being built live, from scratch.
CLASS 3 — Guided mentoring – 2h
Goal: unblock real automation projects from participants in the class.
How it works: the student submits their material up to 24 hours beforehand (file link + question). The instructor selects cases and reviews them live, with the class following the reasoning. The session covers:
- The class's most common mistakes, corrected for everyone at once
- ⭐ Selected cases reviewed live, with the class following the reasoning
- 🔍 How the instructor finds and evaluates CAD automation — where to look, how to assess third-party routines, and how to follow what is new in each version
- 🔮 Advanced paths, for anyone wishing to go further: batch automation of hundreds of files and other ways to program ZWCAD
- Open questions
What is this course NOT?
- It is not a LISP programming course. You will not learn to write code — you will learn to specify, test and approve what the AI writes
- It is not a .NET, VBA or ZRX development course. These APIs are only mentioned during mentoring, not taught as course content
- It is not a Python or API integration course. Controlling ZWCAD externally is a topic for the mentoring discussion, not for the course
- ZWCAD has no built-in AI chat, does not generate drawings from text and has no AI rendering. None of this exists in any version of the product — and the course is clear about that
- The mentoring session reviews selected cases from the class, not every student's individual project
Materials provided to students
- ⭐ The LISP factory skill — the interview, the code standard with an interface, test mode with logging, and the embedded official ZWSOFT documentation (476 functions for offline reference), ready to install. It is the course's main resource
- The interview protocol — the questions that define a routine, to help you understand the process
- ZWCAD pitfalls table — functions that do not exist and what to use instead
- Quantity takeoff guide — the Class 1 step-by-step process to repeat in any drawing
- Distribution guide — open or protected code, and how to decide
- The routine you generated yourself — working, with source code for future development
- Recording of all 3 sessions




