Chisel
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Installation

Chisel is a Blender extension. Install Blender first, then drop the Chisel zip into the Blender window.

Requirements

  • Blender 4.5.7 or newer: including the 5.x series.
  • Windows x64, Linux x64, or macOS on Apple Silicon (ARM64). There is no Intel-Mac build.
  • Vulkan-capable GPU strongly recommended. OpenGL works but compiles and runs 5–10× slower. On Apple Silicon the renderer runs natively on Metal.

Chisel ships native armesher wheels for Python 3.11 and 3.13 (the runtimes Blender 4.5 and 5.x use) across all three platforms. Blender installs the wheel matching your platform and Python version automatically.

Get Blender

  1. Visit blender.org and grab 4.5.7 or later (4.5.7+ or any 5.x) for your OS.
  2. Install Blender.

Get Chisel

Download Chisel from the Superhive marketplace and save the .zip somewhere convenient.

Install the addon

  1. Open Blender.
  2. Drag the Chisel .zip directly into the Blender window. Blender installs it as an extension.
  3. Edit → Preferences → Save Preferences so the install persists across sessions.

Chisel tool in the toolbar

When the install completes, the Chisel workspace tool appears in the 3D View toolbar. That’s the visible sign the extension is loaded.

Verify

Open Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Chisel and look at the Info tab. The status block should show:

  • armesher: armesher 4.1.0 with a checkmark, the bundled native library.
  • GPU Backend: the backend Blender is running on (e.g. Vulkan, Metal on Apple Silicon, or OpenGL). Vulkan and Metal are much faster than OpenGL. On Blender 5.x, OpenGL turns this line red and offers a button to the System settings. Blender only falls back to OpenGL there when Vulkan failed to start, and Chisel needs the same Vulkan driver.
  • Schema hash: Schema hash: <hash> (matched), confirming the addon and the loaded wheel agree.

If the schema line reads Schema hash mismatch instead, the loaded armesher wheel was built against a different addon revision. Click Update Native Libraries to reinstall the bundled wheel, then restart Blender. The build-hash handshake catches a stale wheel up front with a “rebuild wheels” notice. It won’t fail silently at render time.

Intel integrated GPUs. The first session compiles shaders and saves them for the next one. Some Intel drivers crash inside that saved cache; if that happens, Chisel turns the cache off on the next launch and you get a slower first frame instead of a crash. See Preferences.

Next

Head to First Launch to switch on the engine, drop your first primitive, and try a smooth boolean.