Professional tolerance stack-up analysis for mechanical and product design engineers — fully offline, zero install.
VectorTol replaces brittle Excel spreadsheets and expensive cloud tools with a fast, visual desktop application that keeps your IP on your machine.
| Platform | File | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | VectorTol_0.1.0_aarch64.dmg |
Drag to Applications, right-click → Open on first launch |
| Windows (x64) | VectorTol_0.1.0_x64.exe |
Run installer, approve SmartScreen if prompted |
| Pain point | VectorTol solution |
|---|---|
| Excel errors from wrong +/− signs | Visual arrow canvas enforces direction automatically |
| No statistical analysis in spreadsheets | Live RSS analysis + Monte Carlo simulation built in |
| Cloud tools rejected by IP security policy | Fully offline, zero telemetry, no server connection |
| Hard to share or standardize | Single .vtol file contains everything — canvas, data, settings |
| Tolerances pass on paper but fail in production | Yield % and failure rate (ppm) from RSS and Monte Carlo |
1. Import a cross-section image (PNG/JPG) into the canvas
2. Draw arrows directly on the image — each arrow = one stack-up dimension
3. Fill in tolerances in the grid (or let ISO 286 auto-fill from your process)
4. Set your design intent (clearance, interference, flush, etc.) and bounds
5. Read live WC and RSS results — PASS / FAIL, yield %, failure rate
6. Run Monte Carlo for production-realistic simulation
7. If failing: use Tolerance Allocation to redistribute tolerances across parts
8. If nominal gap is wrong: use Nominal Advisor to find which dimensions to adjust
9. Review title/author/date, then save or export for design review
- Import a cross-section drawing or photo as background (PNG/JPG) — drag-and-drop or via toolbar
- Draw tolerance vectors (arrows) directly on the image with click-drag
- Each arrow auto-detects direction: Right/Up = +1, Left/Down = −1
- Bi-directional sync: drawing an arrow creates a grid row; deleting either removes both
- Pan and zoom (scroll wheel + middle mouse drag — CAD-style controls)
- Color-code vectors by part; adjust line width per vector
- Auto-fit imported images to the canvas viewport
- Undo/redo with 50-step history
- High-density data grid with Excel-like keyboard navigation and paste
- Drag-to-reorder rows to reorganize the stack-up
- Asymmetric tolerance support (e.g. +0.05/−0.02) with proper mean-shift
- ISO 286 tolerance auto-fill — select the manufacturing process (machining, grinding, milling, boring, lapping, etc.) and the IT-grade tolerance is auto-calculated from the nominal dimension
- % Contribution column — highlights the primary offenders (>25%) in red
- Live Worst-Case and RSS recalculation as you type
- Worst-Case (WC): deterministic maximum/minimum gap assuming all parts at their tolerance limits simultaneously
- RSS (Root Sum Square): statistical gap — assumes parts follow normal distributions; more realistic for production
- Compact analysis dashboard: fixed 2×3 results grid with expandable RSS and Monte Carlo mini-plots
- Monte Carlo simulation: 10K–1M iterations with configurable sample count; histogram with pass/fail coloring, σ-markers, yield %, and failure rate (ppm or %)
- Design intent validation: Clearance, Interference, Flush, Proud, Recess, Custom — live PASS/FAIL badge
- Tolerance Allocation — when the design fails, suggests how to redistribute tolerances:
- Proportional: scale all tolerances by the same factor
- Top Contributors: tighten only the rows contributing >25% to the stack
- Grade Step: step up/down one ISO IT grade per part
- Asymmetric Shift: shift asymmetric tolerances toward nominal to recover gap
- Relaxation: loosen over-toleranced parts while maintaining pass
- Nominal Advisor — when tolerances alone can't fix the gap, suggests which nominal dimensions to change:
- Lock individual dimensions that can't move (tooling constraints, material stock)
- Three strategies: Closing-link focus, Equal-split, Weighted by adjustability score
- Per-row or apply-all
- PDF — one-click landscape A4 report: title block, annotated canvas diagram, full data table with % contribution, WC and RSS results with color-coded PASS/FAIL
- Excel (.xlsx) — all grid columns plus analysis results section
- CSV — raw stack-up data for further processing
- Save / export review modal — edit title, author, and date before the file is written
- Auto-save + draft recovery — periodic draft protection with configurable interval
- Three themes: Light, Dark, and Swiss International (high-contrast)
- Resizable panels — workspace (canvas + grid) left, all results and insights right
- macOS native menu bar — File, Edit, View menus integrated with all project operations
- Unified macOS title bar — traffic lights sit inside the toolbar row (no separate title bar band)
- Snapped analysis-results resizing and smarter advisor focus states
- Design Intent card picker with hover guidance
- Rich tooltip descriptions on key controls
- Interactive tutorial for new users (auto-starts on first launch, re-launchable via
?button) - Full keyboard shortcut set for efficient operation
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
V |
Select / move vectors |
D |
Draw vector tool |
L |
Toggle direction lock (H/V only) |
S |
Toggle magnetic snap to endpoints |
Shift (hold while drawing) |
Lock stroke to H or V |
| Middle mouse (hold) | Pan — CAD-style |
| Scroll wheel | Zoom in / out |
Delete / Backspace |
Remove selected vector + row |
Escape |
Cancel draw / deselect |
Cmd+N / Ctrl+N |
New project |
Cmd+O / Ctrl+O |
Open project |
Cmd+S / Ctrl+S |
Save project |
Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z |
Undo |
Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z |
Redo |
? |
Open keyboard shortcuts reference |
npm install
npm run tauri devnpm run devnpm run tauri buildProduces native bundles for the current host OS in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.
rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
cargo install cargo-xwin
npm run tauri build -- --target x86_64-pc-windows-msvc -- -- --runner cargo-xwinOutput: src-tauri/target/x86_64-pc-windows-msvc/release/vectortol.exe
| Phase | Status | Delivered outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | ✅ Complete | Offline calculator, AG Grid stack-up editor, WC/RSS engine, .vtol save/load |
| Phase 2 | ✅ Complete | Visual canvas, image import, bi-directional row/vector sync, undo/redo |
| Phase 3 | ✅ Complete | PDF/XLSX/CSV export, editable metadata, direction lock, endpoint snap |
| Phase 4 | ✅ Complete | ISO 286 tolerance standards, Tolerance Allocation, Nominal Advisor, themes |
| Phase 5 | ✅ Complete | Tutorial onboarding, save-review modal, autosave/recovery, snapped insights layout |
| Phase 6 | ✅ Complete | macOS native menu bar, unified title bar, canvas image rendering fix, drag-and-drop fix |
Projects save as .vtol files — self-contained JSON including:
- All stack-up rows with tolerances and metadata
- Canvas vectors (arrow positions, colors, widths)
- Background image (base64-embedded — no external dependencies)
- Design intent settings
- Project name and author
Files saved in any version of VectorTol load correctly in later versions.
- Fully offline — strict Content Security Policy blocks all external network requests
- Zero telemetry — no analytics, no crash reporting, no server communication ever
- Local-only — all data stays on the engineer's machine; safe for proprietary designs
- Native desktop bundles — packaged as host-platform desktop artifacts with no cloud dependency
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Desktop | Tauri v2 (Rust) |
| Frontend | React 18 + TypeScript (strict) |
| Data grid | AG Grid Community |
| Canvas | Konva.js (react-konva) |
| State | Zustand |
| Precision math | decimal.js |
| jsPDF + jspdf-autotable | |
| Excel | SheetJS (xlsx) |
| Themes | CSS Custom Properties |
Proprietary. All rights reserved.