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I’m sure there will be some value, especially as the LLM systems become capable of doing more of the work, but as a professional robotics engineer with a focus

I’m sure there will be some value, especially as the LLM systems become capable of doing more of the work, but as a professional robotics engineer with a focus on mechanical engineering, OpenSCAD just cannot perform appropriately to serve as a primary CAD platform for professional mechanical design. Parametric GUI based design has so many advantages, a key one being that you can click on a feature and change it easily.

progbits 2y ago
I think both approaches have merit, I find the ability to have proper libraries/functions (such as "place M4x8 socket head countersunk bolt here") is really nice, though I'm faster with the click&change approach for exploratory design. However the thing holding OpenSCAD back is the fact it is CSG (basically booleans on primitives) which is just not good enough for non-trivial parts. More interesting tool is cadquery[1] which uses the OpenCASCADE b-rep kernel. Still not as powerful as commercial offerings sadly, but at least on the right path to get there. [1] https://cadquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://cadquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- lincoln20xx 2y ago
  I've been using build123d (based on cadquery) quite a bit and I really like it. I still use solidworks for simulations, drawings, and most fillet operations - because it turns out that doing fillets right is very non-trivial. Code-cad is great because you get exactly what you put in, but sometimes it can feel like starting with a bucket of logic gates instead of a microcontroller. I've had "test LLM's with code-cad" on my todo list for a while, as I think it has the possibility of greatly accelerating the production of the additional part libraries that I'd need to able to make more regular use of it.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  Been trying to install cadquery on a mac (M1) but ouch, not easy, and not working yet.
  - misnome 2y ago
    FWIW conda-forge packages cadquery and it's dependencies, including on macOS-arm. So micromamba/mamba/conda can easily be used to install it. build123d is being worked on.
    - WillPostForFood 2y ago
      Great, thanks! I'll give it a try. Brew -> pip -> cadquery was a dead end for me.
      - WillPostForFood 2y ago
        Got it running, thanks again!

progbits 2y ago

I think both approaches have merit, I find the ability to have proper libraries/functions (such as "place M4x8 socket head countersunk bolt here") is really nice, though I'm faster with the click&change approach for exploratory design. However the thing holding OpenSCAD back is the fact it is CSG (basically booleans on primitives) which is just not good enough for non-trivial parts. More interesting tool is cadquery[1] which uses the OpenCASCADE b-rep kernel. Still not as powerful as commercial offerings sadly, but at least on the right path to get there. [1] https://cadquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://cadquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

lincoln20xx 2y ago
I've been using build123d (based on cadquery) quite a bit and I really like it. I still use solidworks for simulations, drawings, and most fillet operations - because it turns out that doing fillets right is very non-trivial. Code-cad is great because you get exactly what you put in, but sometimes it can feel like starting with a bucket of logic gates instead of a microcontroller. I've had "test LLM's with code-cad" on my todo list for a while, as I think it has the possibility of greatly accelerating the production of the additional part libraries that I'd need to able to make more regular use of it.
WillPostForFood 2y ago
Been trying to install cadquery on a mac (M1) but ouch, not easy, and not working yet.
- misnome 2y ago
  FWIW conda-forge packages cadquery and it's dependencies, including on macOS-arm. So micromamba/mamba/conda can easily be used to install it. build123d is being worked on.
  - WillPostForFood 2y ago
    Great, thanks! I'll give it a try. Brew -> pip -> cadquery was a dead end for me.
    - WillPostForFood 2y ago
      Got it running, thanks again!