Where Can You Try Crosscut’s Programmable Drawings?

Start with the essay, not an installer

Open the Crosscut research essay on a large screen. Its embedded examples let you drag points and watch relationships persist. They simplify a tablet-and-stylus prototype for mouse input; access to these examples is different from receiving a complete authoring app.

The essay was published in March 2022 and presents a research prototype.

Change a model where you can see it

The project description starts with ordinary sketching, then adds behavior within the sketch. Drawings become reusable parts that can be nested inside other drawings. That gives a small construction a second role as a building block.

In one demo, a yellow connection makes the horizontal positions of two black points equal. Dragging a point shows how the linked point responds, without opening a separate text editor. The appeal is being able to inspect a rule beside the objects it affects.

This changes what to look for in the demonstration. A polished picture communicates a result; an interactive model lets you change an assumption and examine the consequence.

Choose an authoring environment separately

Apparatus combines graphics editing with programming and provides a browser editor link. Its documentation explains JavaScript expressions for calculated properties, alongside examples such as charts and geometric constructions. It is a more direct starting point if your next step is authoring a diagram with formulas.

Inkbase explores a related question: what if hand-drawn sketches could be programmed like spreadsheets? It combines drawn objects and properties with reactive computation and scripting. Pen input does not imply the absence of code.

When exploring Crosscut, follow the connections as well as the moving points. The interesting question is which relationships remain true as you change the drawing.