Introduction

This article describes how to install and register your version of nanoCAD Free (nanoCAD 5). This guide is written in July 2026 and instructions here is valid on this date, if something is different or you have any additional questions, please, leave comment to this article with description of your issue.

Note, that nanoCAD Free is pretty old software that was released in 2013. It has no technical upgrades or official technical support. However, you can ask your questions here, in Community.

Drawings to work with using nanoCAD Free has to be up to dwg version 2013. Some issues might occur with newest version of Windows. When this software was released, there was Windows 7, so, nanoCAD Free can work with Windows 10 and 11, but it’s not guaranteed and issues might occur.

This community designed to unite professionals in CAD, that are using nanoCAD products, including nanoCAD Free, all other the world, so sharing your issues, experience or just thoughts here is appreciated.

Download nanoCAD Free

Open official website: https://nanocad.com

Click on “Products” and select “nanoCAD Free”, in appeared menu with nanoCAD Free options click on “Download”.

Another way of getting into download nanoCAD Free menu is to open direct link:
https://nanocad.com/products/nanocad-free/download/

Click on “Download” to start downloading nanoCAD Free.

If you haven’t been registered yet on nanocad.com, then you’ll be prompted to register, or you can login, if you already have an account. To register click on “register” and to log into your account, if you have one, click on “log in”.

If you already registered and logged in, then download process will start.

Register at nanocad.com

Process of registering at nanocad.com is simple: open https://nanocad.com and click on the icon in top right corner of the website as shown on the screenshot below.

Other way is to open link: https://nanocad.com/personal/

In opened form you can select to log into your existing account, or to register.

To register new account click on “Create account”.

Fill up appeared form.

Note, that your email you use here will be connected with your license requests and your received licenses further.

This might affect for example, if you’re requesting for educational license, in this purpose it’s better to use your schools email, as described in: How to get a nanoCAD Platform Educational License for Students & Teachers

Anyway, you can use any email, you wish, just be ready to confirm it further to activate your account.

After you filled up all the fields in the registration form click on “Create account” button.

You’ll be prompted to enter verification code to activate your account. To find this code open your email you used to register and find letter from nanocad with verification code, copy it and past into the activation form.

Click “Confirm” button and then Sign in form will appear.

Input here your email and password you used in registration form.

Congratulations, you are now having registered account at nanocad.com and can use your personal cabinet to ask for licenses and download products.

Getting Serial Number for nanoCAD Free license

To request for license, open your personal cabinet at: https://nanocad.com/personal/

In your personal cabinet find block with nanoCAD Free. Here you can see two buttons:

1.      Download nanoCAD Free

2.      Get serial number

In order to get license for you copy of nanoCAD Free you need to use “Get serial number” button.

What “Number of licenses: 2pcs” here means? This means, that you can use this given Serial Number to register 2 installations of you nanoCAD Free. For example – install it on two different PC and activate using same Serial Number.

After you click on “Get serial number” wait until system proceed your request.

If everything is ok, system will give you your Serial Number to get your license further.

This Serial Number will be displayed in your personal cabinet, in “nanoCAD Free” block and in “Recent licenses” section. There also will be dates of validity.

Now you can download and install nanoCAD Free, if you haven’t previously.

Installing nanoCAD Free

After you download installation file, find and double click on it.

Usually it looks like on screenshot below and has .exe extension.

Double click on .exe file will start process of installation and call Setup Wizard.

You need to follow it’s instructions.

First read carefully and then check “I accept the terms in the License Agreement” if you agree with End-User License Agreement.

Next step requires to input serial number, which you can get from your personal cabinet.

User Name and Company are not necessary, you can use here what’s better suits you.

Then you can set where to install nanoCAD. I’d highly recommend to leave default path and just click “Next”.

If nanoCAD is your main software to work with .dwg files, then you can associate this files with it. It’s not necessary, but it’s better to do so your Windows system will understand further what software to be called when you doubleclick on drawing files with .dwg/.dwg/.dxf or .dws extension.

Most important steps done, now just click “Install” and wait until nanoCAD Free will be installed on your computer.

Now just click on “Install” and wait for the procedure to complete.

On final step of installation system will prompt you to register you nanoCAD Free.

It’s highly recommended to check “Launch RegWizard” checkbox and then click “Finnish” button to complete installation and to start registration process.

Anyway, if you prefer not to start registration process, you can not check “Launch RegWizard” and then call it from your Windows start menu later.

Registering nanoCAD Free (Getting a license)

To register nanoCAD Free you need a Serial Number. Select “Enter the serial number to get a license file” and then press “Next”. If you already have license file, then you can select “Manually activate license file”. Note that nanoCAD Free has no network licenses unlike nanoCAD Platform, so you can’t use “Connect to License Server”.

Find Serial Number in your personal cabinet at: https://nanocad.com/personal

as shown in screenshot below and input it in the required field of RegWizard, then click “Next”.

Next step system will ask from you to input email. This email has to be the same, you use to register in your personal cabinet, see the screenshot below.

After you specified your Serial Number and email (that are same as in your personal cabinet), confirm registration of this license on your PC. Note, that you linking license with exact this PC configuration and if there will be changes, for example – new HDD/SSD with operational system, or new motherboard, this might affect your license. Upgrading with adding/removing RAM will not affect your license.

On next step select “Request license file online”. This will send your request directly to the Licensing Service and you’ll get response as soon as possible. This is recommended variant.

“Request license file by e-mail” means that your request will be sent to Licensing Service via email, and the response you’ll receive via email too. In response you’ll get a license file, that you can activate using “Manually activate license file” on the first step of Registration Wizard. This step is comparatively slower than requesting online and might take more time. Use it only if requesting online is not working for some reasons.

“Save license request to file” allows to save your request data into file and then you can send it to technical support to request license file. This is the slowest way to get a license and typical use case for this is when your PC with installed nanoCAD Free is not connected to a network. In all other cases it’s highly recommended to use “Request license file online”.

So, hope you chose “Request license file online” (or other suitable for your situation option) and click “Next”.

Note the response from Licensing Service, if it’s somewhat like “License file successfully received and saved…” then – congratulations, you completed setup and registration!

Click “Finnish” and enjoy working with your registered nanoCAD Free version.

Starting nanoCAD Free

After you install nanoCAD Free on your Desktop will appear an icon with “nanoCAD en 5.0” text.

Double click with left mouse button on it and this will start nanoCAD Free.

Extending license

This information is valid on the date, when the article was written, on summer 2026. Check out for news to be updated on possible changes.

Extending your license is possible from your personal cabinet at: https://nanocad.com/personal

Find block with “nanoCAD Free” as shown in screenshot below.

Here you’ll find your Serial Number dates of validity. If it’s already expired, there will be also “Extend for 1 Year” button. Click on it and your Serial Number will updates for one more year.

It’s important to note, that extending will be not from the date you click on it, but from the expiration date, as you can see on screenshots: previous license expired on 10.10.2025 and extending is for a year since this date, until 10.10.2026, despite I clicked on it in July 2026. So, keep an eye on your dates of validity and extend your licenses on time.

Another important thing to know is: you can only extend your license no earlier that 7 days before its expiration day. So, if you license is going to expire in a month, you should wait until it becomes just a 7 days before expiration and only then start to extend it.

Conclusion

NanoCAD Free is still one of the most affordable CAD software that allows you to work with dwg drawings. It’s not that hard to install and register it with using this guide for example, or Community support.

However, you should be aware, that nanoCAD Free is suitable only for dwg standards up to 2013 and usable for most simple cases, without 3D or any other more complex and smart functions.

If you’re a teacher or a student at the moment, you can use nanoCAD Platform with all it’s power for Free instead of using nanoCAD Free. You need to prove your educational status though.

How to get nanoCAD Platform for education you can read here: How to get a nanoCAD Platform Educational License for Students & Teachers

If you have any questions about nanoCAD Free working, installing or registering, you’re welcome to ask them in this community.

I had one drawing with only six layouts that I had to print right away, and the only solution was to delete all six layouts and recreate them one by one.

I even tried Publish in order to plot the whole set as a Microsoft pdf, and that doesn't cause a crash, but it shows that option as unavailable now, although I have done that plenty of times in the past.

Is there some other way to edit this printer information without causing a crash? I am on NanoCad Pro version 23.

In this tutorial we will learn how to recognize tables and title blocks in drawings. Sometimes it happens that as a result of an error, a title block or table becomes a set of simple primitives combined with text fields. nanoCAD with the Construction module provides the possibility to recognize and replace a table or title block consisting of primitives into a table or title block.

• Are you an actual teacher or a current student?

• Do you have students (teachers) email with school’s domain name in it?

• Can you provide document that is no older than a month or has clearly visible none expired dates of validity and can confirm your current educational status?

If you answered YES to all this questions, you can apply for FREE EDUCATIONAL license to nanoCAD Platform for a year!

Open nanocad.com and go to personal cabinet.

Register, if you haven’t yet.

Use your school’s email for registration (students/teachers email)!

Select purpose: "Education".

Activate your account using received code.

Login

Now you can check your personal cabinet. At the moment there should be no active licenses, but you don’t have to do something about it right now.

Open nanocad.com, click on “Community” and select “For Teachers and Students”.

Click on “Ask for License”.

Fill up the form.

Don’t forget to attach document, that clearly confirm your current educational status.

It might be your students ID card with clearly visible dates of validity, or other official document, that is no older than a month.

After filling the form and attaching confirming documents click "Send the Request.

Now everything complete!

Wait until your request processed. After your request approved, you’ll get confirmation email and in your personal cabinet appear your license data.

After this you can download nanoCAD Platform from official web site and register it

esiste un metodo veloce che mi permetta di spezzare le linee che si intersecano con altre linee senza dover clic per selezionare, clic per spezzare, clic per uscire, clic per riposizionare, per spezzare e cosi per tante volte di seguito. La versione di nanocad è EN 5.0

Grazie per tutti i suggerimenti.

In this lesson, we will learn about advanced table functionality. nanoCAD tables allow you to significantly speed up the process of creating and completing specifications with the ability to retrieve data directly from the drawing. This allows you to create bills of quantities in seconds. In this lesson we will also consider the possibility of using the Construction module together with nanoCAD tables to automate the creation of template tables using programmable forms.

Introduction

There is a way to significantly boost your productivity while drawing with efficient usage of keyboard. This might be done with shortcuts. Shortcuts – is the way of calling commands without Graphical User Interface (GUI) or even without writing full command name in Command Line (CL). There are short aliases, or a short names for a lot of commands, for example: you can draw a line by clicking on icon in Ribbon (or Classical interface), write command LINE in Command Line (or Dynamic Input Field), or use here a shortcut, i.e. just one letter – L.

How can you easily find shortcut for your most usable commands?

When you call your command, no matter from GUI or CL, pay attention on output from Command Line at the bottom of platforms working window. There will be full command name and also short names, if available. For example, when I draw a line, there will be output:

L,LINE - Line by Points
This means that you can use either call this command using full name: LINE, or use shortcut: L

How this work: input shortcut letter in Command Line and click Enter, that’s it, then just proceed with this command as usual, in Line case – specify points to draw the line.

Important note: it’s not necessary to input shortcut in CAPITAL CASE, they are not case sensitive, so you can use small regular “l” same as capital “L”.

This article describes some most usable shortcuts.

Drawing shortcuts

Shortcuts to draw basic geometrical objects.

Regular command	Shortcut	Example
ARC	A	Creates an arc.
CIRCLE	C	Creates a circle.
ELLIPSE	EL	Creates an ellipse.
HATCH, BHATCH	H, BH	Call Hatch dialog window.
LINE	L	Creates a line.
MLINE	ML	Creates a multiline.
PLINE	PL	Creates a polyline.
POLYGON	POL	Creates closed polygon.
RECTANGLE, RECTANG, RECT	R, REC	Creates rectangle.
SPLINE	SPL	Creates a spline.
XLINE	XL	Creates xline (infinite guide line).

Shortcuts to create annotations

Regular command	Shortcut	Example
DIM, DLI	D	Creates Dimension.
DIMSTYLE	DS	Call Dimension Style Manager.
MLEADER	LE	Creates multileader.
MTEXT	T, MT	Creates a multiline text.
TABLE	TB	Call dialog window to create nanoCAD Table.
TEXT	DT	Creates one line text.

Shortcuts to modify objects

Regular command	Shortcut	Example
ARRAYCLASSIC, ARRAY	AR	Call dialog window to create 2D array.
BREAK	BR	Break vectors.
CHAMFER	CHA	Creates a chamfer.
COPY	CO, CP	Creates copy of selected object.
ERASE	E	Deletes a selection.
EXTEND	EX	Extend vectors by edge.
FILLET	F	Creates a fillet.
JOIN	J	Joins separate segments of objects into one object by combining their endpoints.
MIRROR	MI	Mirrors objects.
MOVE	M	Move selected objects.
OFFSET	O	Offset selected objects.
ROTATE	RO	Rotates selected object.
SCALE	SC	Scale selected object.
STRETCH	S	Stretch or move selected object.
TRIM	TR	Trim vectors by edge.

How to find all available shortcuts/aliases or create a new one

In nanoCAD you can find all already created shortcuts or even create a new one, if you need some specific. This is available in “Customize User Interface” dialog window.

How to find this dialog window:

Ribbon: Manage -> Customization -> Interface

Classical interface: Tools -> Customize -> Interface

Command Line: INTERFACE

In appeared dialog window find “Aliases” tab as shortcuts are basically – aliases.

In left panel you can see all already available aliases for given commands.

If you want to create a new one, then click on “Create alias” button.

In appeared dialog window “Create alias” click on “…” button next to “Intername” field.

Then find command, for which you’re going to create alias. In this example I selected INTERFACE command.

After selection click “OK”.

Then write name of alias you want to use for selected command. Note, that if this alias already exists, system won’t give you permission to create double. In my case alias would be “IFACE”.

Click “OK” and then notice, that system warn you – to apply changes you need to restart the program.

To apply changes I close and then restart nanoCAD Platform.

After Platform restarted call in Command Line new alias: IFACE (to show that commands are not depend on register, I call “iface” i.e. IFACE on lower register).

As you can see on screenshot above, system recognize newly created alias or shortcut and connect it with command to call “Customize User Interface” dialog window.

Conclusion

Shortcuts, or aliases can significantly boost your productivity while creating new drawings. Using shortcuts allows you to use keyboard more efficient and make it more productive assistant to your work.

You can use already existing ones, or create some new if you need. Aliases can be short and this will be shortcuts, or you can give new names to Platform commands, even longer than existing, that might be more descriptive or understandable in your processes.

In this lesson, we will learn how to create fields. A field is an element of a special type included in text primitives and block attributes. A field displays the value of a property of some other object (primitive, file, document, etc.). If this value changes during operation, the field content can be updated.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to create a DWT template. A DWT template is a file containing preset drawing settings - layers, object styles, annotation styles and other parameters - that is used as a basis for creating new drawings. Using templates unifies the design process and significantly reduces preparation time, eliminating the need to customize the drawing from scratch each time.