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This looks so good. I’ve gotten into 3D printing in the past six months with an A1 Mini. I initially bought it intending solely to do creative projects with my

This looks so good. I’ve gotten into 3D printing in the past six months with an A1 Mini. I initially bought it intending solely to do creative projects with my kid, but I’ve been surprised to find myself getting deeper into printing functional parts. I recently printed a 6” server rack for a GLi.net Beryl and Apple TV for travel, from a combination of pre-designed and self-designed parts. 3D printing as a pursuit can be time-consuming - there’s always a risk with these things that you take them on as a dilettante and they end up gathering dust in a corner. I initially scraped by with some middling Blender skills (leaning into non-destructive operations where possible), but that is far from ideal - you really do need CAD. But to anyone considering jumping in, I would say: if you get an A1 (get the full size, not the Mini) and use Claude to write your parametric OpenSCAD scripts, the time commitment is such that you can _just about_ indulge in this hobby as a dilettante - eg, as a project for your kids. Without LLMs, I think it would be too much of a commitment unless you’re really dedicated, or already have CAD skills. Anyway, gonna go read this in full.

abeindoria 1y ago
the Bambu P1S with AMS is one of the better purchases I've made. I've had an ender3v2 for so long and while it worked ok (and arguably better than many people's experiences with them), I got tired of constantly fiddling with stuff. Now, it just works. It doesn't matter what I throw at it. Made me get into the CAD hobby too. >use Claude to write your parametric OpenSCAD scripts Can you talk a little about it?
- prawn 1y ago
  I use ChatGPT to help me with OpenSCAD and really enjoy it. It doesn't always nail it, but often works as a shortcut, especially with loops to create radial extrusions. You can muck around with things like asking it to give you code to design a castle, and then see how off-track it is.
- darkteflon 1y ago
  Yes, as sibling mentions, there’s not much to it: just crack open Claude or ChatGPT and start asking for what you want, as an OpenSCAD script. You’ll quickly get a feel for it. Others might have more structured approaches they can share.
causality0 1y ago
If you can assemble Legos you can design in Tinkercad. You don't need to mess around trying to get LLMs to write scad files, though the results can be hilarious.
- RodgerTheGreat 1y ago
  Worth noting: TinkerCAD is capable of parametric modeling in "CodeBlocks" mode. I prefer writing OpenSCAD (by hand, rather than via a warmed-over markov chain), but having the option within something as inviting as TinkerCAD seems great for beginners.
- darkteflon 1y ago
  Tinkercad seems pretty popular, I definitely looked at it along the way, but ultimately I’m never going to choose to use a product from Autodesk if there’s any reasonable alternative, and I’m usually not going to choose something that’s not open source - especially for a hobby. Different strokes though, might be a good fit for some people.
  - causality0 1y ago
    Huh? Claude isn't open-source and neither is Bambu.
    - darkteflon 1y ago
      No, but those pieces don’t have a learning curve, and I can swap them out easily (Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer). If I spend the time learning Tinkercad, then Autodesk enshittifies it, I’ve got to re-skill in another CAD program, don’t I. And starting your comments with “Huh?” is rude.
0_____0 1y ago
Side bar... There are a lot of people who are going to use LLMs to try to do 3D modeling stuff and who are going to hit a wall with it really, really fast. Mechanical design really is a completely different discipline that is very poorly abstractable in the particular way that software engineers are used to.
- kriro 1y ago
  I disagree. My co-worker is an industrial designer and uses Rhino as his day to day CAD tool of choice. I was delighted to see that it translates everything you do to a command line syntax and there's also Python integration. We did some simple tests the other week and you can actually prototype reasonably well by instructing an LLM to generate the Python code that creates the models. It still requires fine tuning but seems like a similar multiplier like using LLMs for programming to get the boring boilerplate out of the way. I'd say a good designer will at least 2x, probably 5x. We are preparing to test with students next semester to see how non-experts profit from this.
  - 0_____0 1y ago
    Edit: I realize I was imprecise, I specifically was referring to 3D CAD for mechanical parts of the type you would generally produce a print for i.e. with controlled geometry and dimensioning. A) That's a surface modeler. B) Parametric CAD doesn't have boilerplate in the same way as software. In a part, you have a feature tree, and a lot of thought goes into constructing the feature tree in a way that both allows for reconfiguration and also somewhat resembles the manufacturing process. Every step depends on the previous step in a way that is necessarily impossible to isolate. If you make a step without being aware of the end state of the tree, you will probably have to redo a bunch of the tree if the part is complex. Also that's not what mechanical engineers spend most of their time doing. Plenty of MEs can code and use an LLM btw, nothing stopping them from optimizing their work processes if they saw fit, yet you don't really see the shoehorning of AI into the space yet.
  - fennecfoxy 1y ago
    Exactly. People act like if an LLM can't get it 100% perfect right away then it's a useless tool. Maybe they're be able to do that one day. But in the meantime I think it's brilliant if it can rough something out, then a human can go and tweak it to the correct dimensions, fix issues or simplify needlessly complex features. Same thing for artists as well - many will come to realise that sure it generates slop, but that slop is still useful as a skeleton to overlay a human creative vision onto.

abeindoria 1y ago

the Bambu P1S with AMS is one of the better purchases I've made. I've had an ender3v2 for so long and while it worked ok (and arguably better than many people's experiences with them), I got tired of constantly fiddling with stuff. Now, it just works. It doesn't matter what I throw at it. Made me get into the CAD hobby too. >use Claude to write your parametric OpenSCAD scripts Can you talk a little about it?

prawn 1y ago
I use ChatGPT to help me with OpenSCAD and really enjoy it. It doesn't always nail it, but often works as a shortcut, especially with loops to create radial extrusions. You can muck around with things like asking it to give you code to design a castle, and then see how off-track it is.
darkteflon 1y ago
Yes, as sibling mentions, there’s not much to it: just crack open Claude or ChatGPT and start asking for what you want, as an OpenSCAD script. You’ll quickly get a feel for it. Others might have more structured approaches they can share.

causality0 1y ago

If you can assemble Legos you can design in Tinkercad. You don't need to mess around trying to get LLMs to write scad files, though the results can be hilarious.

RodgerTheGreat 1y ago
Worth noting: TinkerCAD is capable of parametric modeling in "CodeBlocks" mode. I prefer writing OpenSCAD (by hand, rather than via a warmed-over markov chain), but having the option within something as inviting as TinkerCAD seems great for beginners.
darkteflon 1y ago
Tinkercad seems pretty popular, I definitely looked at it along the way, but ultimately I’m never going to choose to use a product from Autodesk if there’s any reasonable alternative, and I’m usually not going to choose something that’s not open source - especially for a hobby. Different strokes though, might be a good fit for some people.
- causality0 1y ago
  Huh? Claude isn't open-source and neither is Bambu.
  - darkteflon 1y ago
    No, but those pieces don’t have a learning curve, and I can swap them out easily (Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer). If I spend the time learning Tinkercad, then Autodesk enshittifies it, I’ve got to re-skill in another CAD program, don’t I. And starting your comments with “Huh?” is rude.

0_____0 1y ago

Side bar... There are a lot of people who are going to use LLMs to try to do 3D modeling stuff and who are going to hit a wall with it really, really fast. Mechanical design really is a completely different discipline that is very poorly abstractable in the particular way that software engineers are used to.

kriro 1y ago
I disagree. My co-worker is an industrial designer and uses Rhino as his day to day CAD tool of choice. I was delighted to see that it translates everything you do to a command line syntax and there's also Python integration. We did some simple tests the other week and you can actually prototype reasonably well by instructing an LLM to generate the Python code that creates the models. It still requires fine tuning but seems like a similar multiplier like using LLMs for programming to get the boring boilerplate out of the way. I'd say a good designer will at least 2x, probably 5x. We are preparing to test with students next semester to see how non-experts profit from this.
- 0_____0 1y ago
  Edit: I realize I was imprecise, I specifically was referring to 3D CAD for mechanical parts of the type you would generally produce a print for i.e. with controlled geometry and dimensioning. A) That's a surface modeler. B) Parametric CAD doesn't have boilerplate in the same way as software. In a part, you have a feature tree, and a lot of thought goes into constructing the feature tree in a way that both allows for reconfiguration and also somewhat resembles the manufacturing process. Every step depends on the previous step in a way that is necessarily impossible to isolate. If you make a step without being aware of the end state of the tree, you will probably have to redo a bunch of the tree if the part is complex. Also that's not what mechanical engineers spend most of their time doing. Plenty of MEs can code and use an LLM btw, nothing stopping them from optimizing their work processes if they saw fit, yet you don't really see the shoehorning of AI into the space yet.
- fennecfoxy 1y ago
  Exactly. People act like if an LLM can't get it 100% perfect right away then it's a useless tool. Maybe they're be able to do that one day. But in the meantime I think it's brilliant if it can rough something out, then a human can go and tweak it to the correct dimensions, fix issues or simplify needlessly complex features. Same thing for artists as well - many will come to realise that sure it generates slop, but that slop is still useful as a skeleton to overlay a human creative vision onto.