About SolidVents

What it is

SolidVents makes speaker grilles, ventilation holes, halftone textures and vector backgrounds. You draw a frame, choose a pattern, and shape it with gradient controllers placed directly on the canvas: the holes grow, shrink or fade wherever you put a point, and you see the result while you drag.

The same design exports as a 2D vector (SVG, DXF) and as a 3D CAD solid (STEP), so it goes straight to laser cutting, CNC and 3D printing, or into SolidWorks, Fusion 360, Rhino and Creo for the rest of the part.

It is the front end of that workflow, not a replacement for any of it. SolidVents is not a CAD program, not a vector editor, and not an AI image generator: every pattern is computed from the parameters you set, so the output is exact and repeatable.

Why it exists

A gradient hole array on a product housing used to take an hour or two by hand: lay out the grid, scale each hole, rebuild it all when the gradient needed to move. The tools could draw the holes but could not show the gradient while you worked on it.

SolidVents started as a fix for that. The idea is simple: put the gradient itself on the canvas as something you can grab, and make the pattern follow it instantly. Everything else grew from there, including the halftone and texture patterns, the shape editor and the community library of presets.

Who makes it

SolidVents is designed, built and supported by Yoshi Chen, working alone in Taiwan. There is no company behind it and no support team: the person who answers your email is the person who wrote the code.

That shapes how it is run. Features come from what users ask for in the feedback form and from using the tool every day; every release is listed on the changelog; and the direction can change quickly when something is clearly missing.

How it is funded

SolidVents is free to use, with three exports a day. People who need more buy a Pro plan: unlimited exports, cloud backup, shape morphing, split STEP export and the AI design API. That is the only income.

There are no ads, no sponsored presets, and your data is never sold. Payments go through Lemon Squeezy, or Afdian from mainland China, and card details never reach us.

Where your designs live

Most of what you do in SolidVents never leaves your device. Designs are saved in your browser or in a folder on your own disk; they only go to a server if you turn on cloud backup, submit a design to the community library, or work through the API. What you export belongs to you, in commercial products or anything else, with no attribution required.

The details are in the privacy policy and the terms of service, both written in plain language.

Get in touch

Questions, bug reports, a pattern you cannot make: write to solidvents@gmail.com or use the feedback form in the app. If you post something you made with SolidVents, tag @solidvents on Instagram. Seeing the finished parts is the best part of this job.