Duc File Format

Project on display developed in Scopture by the Ducflair team, representing physical-engineering work from the openFrame project.

Overview

The .duc file format is an open, gzip-compressed SQLite database container for physical-engineering project state before execution. Designed for physical engineering projects, high-precision design workflows, and cross-platform runtime environments, .duc provides a structured, queryable, and version-controlled container for project geometry, metadata, and decision records.

By embedding relational storage, full-text search, DAG-based versioning, and project management directly inside a SQLite database file, .duc links engineering project state with real-time graphical applications, automation tools, and AI workflows.

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Core Capabilities

• SQLite Container Architecture: A .duc file is a gzip-compressed SQLite database. It eliminates custom binary parsing logic by leveraging SQLite’s WAL journal mode, atomic transactions, and relational querying across desktop, mobile, server, and WebAssembly runtime environments.
• Built-in DAG Version Control: Supports versioning directly inside the file container, tracking full checkpoints, incremental deltas, schema migration boundaries, and SHA-256 data integrity checksums.
• Full-Text Search (FTS5): Automatic, real-time indexing of element labels, text primitives, embedded documents, parametric models, symbol blocks, and OCR-extracted text.
• Embedded Project Charter: Incorporates requirements, acceptance criteria, hard/soft constraints, decision logs, and issue references directly within the project state file.
• Infinite Surface & Multi-Scope Systems: Supports infinite canvas navigation with dynamic unit scope scaling (mm, cm, m, in, ft, nm) and precision snapping across micro and macro zoom levels.
• Physical Engineering Primitives & Styling: Supports vector geometry, parametric lines, text, frames, tables, hatch patterns, custom line heads, boolean operations, and embedded media assets.