Questions about Mortise, answered.

What Mortise is.

What is Mortise?

Mortise is a woodworking app for designing furniture, cabinets and shop fixtures: woodworking CAD that runs in the browser at woodworking.app. You build a project from real boards at their real sizes, cut and join them the way you would in the shop, and Mortise makes the cut list, the shopping list, the hardware count and a printable cut sheet from the model.

Why is it called Mortise, and is it spelled mortice?

A mortise is the pocket a tenon fits into, the joint at the heart of most furniture. Mortice is the British spelling of the same word; the app is Mortise either way, and it lives at woodworking.app.

Who is Mortise for?

Woodworkers who want to plan a piece of furniture, a cabinet or a shop fixture before buying wood: to see it in 3D, check the joinery, and walk into the lumberyard with a list.

Do I need to install anything?

No. Mortise runs in a current web browser with WebGL 2. Open it, sign in, and start a project.

Does Mortise work on a phone or tablet?

It is made for a computer with a keyboard and a mouse or trackpad. In the project menu you can tell it whether you use a mouse wheel or a trackpad, so orbiting, panning and zooming feel right on either.

Does Mortise design the furniture for me?

No. There are no box or cabinet generators. You place each board and make each cut and joint, and Mortise keeps the sizes, the joinery and the lists right as you go.

Lumber, joints and hardware.

Does Mortise use real lumber sizes?

Yes. A 2x4 is 1½″ by 3½″, 8/4 hardwood is planed to 1¾″, and ¾″ plywood is 23⁄32″. Dimensional lumber, hardwood by the quarter, metric timber and ten kinds of sheet goods are all drawn at the size you will actually buy.

Which wood species can I use?

Twelve: SPF, pressure-treated, western red cedar, Douglas fir, select pine, red oak, white oak, white ash, hard maple, yellow birch, black cherry and black walnut. Any board section can be any species.

Which joints can I cut?

Dovetails, mortise and tenon, box joints, bridles, dadoes, grooves, rabbets, tongues, T-slots, dovetail slots, half laps and cross laps, plus holes and dog-hole grids. Each is cut into one board at a time, as in the shop.

How are screws, dowels and other fasteners sized?

Automatically, from the wood they pass through. Screws are picked by length and gauge, pocket screws from a jig chart, nails at three times the thickness they go through, and Mortise warns you if nothing stocked is long enough.

Can I add hinges and drawer slides?

Yes. Concealed, butt, piano and pivot hinges, side-mount and undermount slides, stays, catches, brackets, knock-down fittings and shelf pins. A hinge is only offered where the door can swing at least 90° clear.

Can I bend wood in Mortise?

Yes, by kerf bending, steam bending or bent lamination. Mortise refuses a radius the wood will not take; white oak and ash steam bend to twice their thickness, maple only to five times.

Can I plan a glue-up?

Yes. Boards glued, screwed or nailed together move as one piece, and a saw cut that crosses the joint cuts through both, the way it would on a real glue-up.

Cut lists, shopping lists and cut sheets.

Does Mortise make a cut list?

Yes. The cut list groups identical parts with their stock and length, and comes with a shopping list of boards and sheets to buy, the hardware with sizes and counts, and the tools the project needs.

How does the shopping list choose boards?

It picks the cheapest set of standard lengths that holds every part, allowing ⅛″ (3 mm) per saw cut and ½″ (10 mm) of end trim, and counts board feet on the nominal size as lumberyards do.

Does it show what the wood will cost?

It shows an estimate, from rough Canadian retail prices per board foot, in Canadian dollars. The prices cannot be edited yet, so use it as a guide rather than a quote.

Can I print a cut sheet?

Yes. Export makes a PDF cut sheet with a parts schedule and a dimensioned drawing of every part, and a cutting plan that lays the parts out on boards and sheets with the least waste.

Can I export to a spreadsheet, SketchUp or a CNC?

Not yet. Mortise exports PDFs: the cut sheet and the cutting plan.

Does Mortise work in metric?

Yes. Mortise works in inches or millimetres. Lengths read to 1⁄64″ or 1 mm, typed values are kept exactly as typed, and metric projects use metric timber, sheets and screws.

Your projects and your account.

Where are my projects saved?

In your Mortise account. Each change is saved a moment after you make it, and every project has a picture of the model on your projects page.

What happens if I edit a project in two tabs?

The second save is held back and Mortise asks which version to keep, so one tab never quietly overwrites the other.

How do I sign in?

With a link sent to your email. There is no password; the link works once and lasts 15 minutes.

Can I use Mortise offline?

No. Projects live in your account, so Mortise needs a connection to open and save them.

Can I export or import a project file?

Not in the app. Projects stay in your account, where you can duplicate, rename and delete them.

Designing with an AI assistant.

Can an AI assistant design in Mortise?

Yes. Mortise offers its tools to AI agents in the browser through WebMCP, and a New design in Claude button (or ChatGPT) hands a new project to the assistant, which builds it with the same actions you use.

Will an AI assistant change my other projects?

It is asked not to. The hand-off starts a new, empty project and tells the assistant to leave any other project alone, and every change it makes is on the undo history.

Still deciding?