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not interesting as the writeup as very AI sloppish :(. i'm sad about that as I would really like to have an intuitive sense for how good the current frontier mo

not interesting as the writeup as very AI sloppish :(. i'm sad about that as I would really like to have an intuitive sense for how good the current frontier models are at coming up with interesting 3d printable parts.

rjsw 19d ago
There was a blog post from a couple of days ago that had been initially flagged, it seemed to me to have a good overview of AI for CAD, will try to find the link.
____tom____ 19d ago
I've been just getting started on this with Astra. Astra is one-shotting good 3D models from photographs for me. I was unable to get Sol to do this, even after multiple rounds. It's not a small change, it's from "not useful" to "pretty good"
- dofm 19d ago
  > Astra is one-shotting good 3D models from photographs for me. Right, but, so what? There is very little utility here. Parts that need to be useful need to be designed to spec.
  - Mashimo 19d ago
    Once you have the model, it's relativ easy to change the demensions / constrains later on, no?
    - dofm 19d ago
      Not if the model has not been implemented from reasonable principles.
      - Mashimo 19d ago
        What does that mean in practice?
        dofm 19d ago
        What it means is that a good CAD model is not just sticking stuff together in 3D space. Parametric flow means that a small number of measurements ripple through the design, and sketches and solids adapt. To do this right, it's easier to just understand the purpose and intent of the model, how it was manufactured, and draw from there. One of the things you get from studying CAD diagrams — like the Solidworks exercises everyone works through — is that real world parts often have surprisingly few dimensioned constraints. A lot more emerges from geometry. So you can look at a diagram and initially think "where the heck does it define this radius!?" and find that it never needs to, because that radius emerges from tangency, parallelism, perpendicularity etc., combined with fewer measurement constraints. Specifying it as a measurement would therefore be overconstraint; it might lead to solids that are difficult/impossible to manufacture or erroneous when another measurement is changed. The diagram will specify the actual driving measurements that come from the part's purpose, with the intent to adapt to different real-world requirements. Any CAD tool that works from images is going to have to approximate, which will create over-complex models with to many measurements that are more fragile with respect to changes, whereas a design that has geometrical constraints in place that are logical will be simpler and more adaptable. With functional parts, roughly, form follows function first, and manufacturability second. But you have to understand why, to be able to make a good part. Even (perhaps especially) with 3D printing. But not uniquely. For example, would this tool be able to understand why the draft angles on a plastic part were important, what determines the bend radius of a part that was made from pressed metal, etc.? I must stress that I am an amateur. But my amateur skills have come from reading and learning about CAD and learning what makes a viable design. (Sorry… this was a stupidly long answer but I am hungry and I figured I should try to blurt it out before I have to get up from my desk and cook. I've edited it a lot and cut out a bit that I will probably put in another comment later)
        roel_v 19d ago
  - ____tom____ 19d ago
    Maybe not for you, but I'm building miniatures for custom board games. Works great.
    - dofm 19d ago
      Right but there is no meaningful specification failure mode in creative CAD, is there? I mean, yes, image to CAD for a little miniature, I can buy that it is OK. Fun, even, especially when your use is sort of transitory. But this article is talking about functional parts. A functional part exists because of its spec, usually fails because of some combination of its material, manufacture, and spec. And the spec is chosen with that in mind. Even working from a text description of a part is error prone because language is imprecise and interpretable. I just don't understand why AI people want to race past actual proper sensible solutions to a problem just to automate generating from text.
      - elwebmaster 19d ago
        People don't have time (or even mental capability / even more time) to learn CAD but they have a task at hand which they want done. If AI can generate a part which is "good enough" for the user at a cost that the user considers reasonable (I.e. zero) then AI gets used. If a part fails thats rarely a concern because these parts are just 3d printed and likely cost single digit cents in filament. User can always print a new one.
        dofm 19d ago
        Right, but the thing that I think sort of militates against this scenario is this: If a non-CAD person imagines a part that they need, the chances are very high indeed that either it isn't what they need, can't be made robustly or sensibly, or if it is, it already exists in some meaningful way that can be adapted, because one of tens of millions of other people already wanted it. This scenario — needing something very specific that can be described only in words and nobody else has ever needed before — is almost imaginary. Most stuff just isn't like that. Now… if someone were to design an AI CAD package that could remix objects that exist and combine them, perhaps with a GUI tool that allowed a user to identify attachment points, maybe that would be interesting. But a lot of that has been solved in non-AI GUIs already. Text-to-CAD just isn't as good an idea as it seems. You are not going to be able to magic up some novel invention from a text description without a significant amount of domain knowledge of the words needed to describe a part, and that domain knowledge usually comes from learning CAD! (Bit like getting a coding agent to write really good code) And simple parts, sorry, just don't need much CAD skill. Get a CAD package on a free plan, learn enough to make your thing. You will get so much more out of that and it will be easier to make changes. It'll probably have standard tools for adding threads, even. Even image-to-CAD for a functional part requires a significant amount of understanding of what to photograph and from which angles, etc.
- elwebmaster 19d ago
  With any tool?
dofm 19d ago
[dead]
TacticalCoder 19d ago
> not interesting as the writeup as very AI sloppish I'm the target for such material for I do use OpenSCAD to model parts I then 3D-print to fix stuff around the house and enhance the cars etc. And yet the writing is totally insufferable AI slop: "All six parts came out printable. Capability turned out to be the boring part of the answer. Where the two diverge is in how they fail." Anyone who writes like this or who enjoys such kind of sentences: from the bottom of my heart, just go fuck yourself.

rjsw 19d ago

There was a blog post from a couple of days ago that had been initially flagged, it seemed to me to have a good overview of AI for CAD, will try to find the link.

____tom____ 19d ago

I've been just getting started on this with Astra. Astra is one-shotting good 3D models from photographs for me. I was unable to get Sol to do this, even after multiple rounds. It's not a small change, it's from "not useful" to "pretty good"

dofm 19d ago
> Astra is one-shotting good 3D models from photographs for me. Right, but, so what? There is very little utility here. Parts that need to be useful need to be designed to spec.
- Mashimo 19d ago
  Once you have the model, it's relativ easy to change the demensions / constrains later on, no?
  - dofm 19d ago
    Not if the model has not been implemented from reasonable principles.
    - Mashimo 19d ago
      What does that mean in practice?
      - dofm 19d ago
        What it means is that a good CAD model is not just sticking stuff together in 3D space. Parametric flow means that a small number of measurements ripple through the design, and sketches and solids adapt. To do this right, it's easier to just understand the purpose and intent of the model, how it was manufactured, and draw from there. One of the things you get from studying CAD diagrams — like the Solidworks exercises everyone works through — is that real world parts often have surprisingly few dimensioned constraints. A lot more emerges from geometry. So you can look at a diagram and initially think "where the heck does it define this radius!?" and find that it never needs to, because that radius emerges from tangency, parallelism, perpendicularity etc., combined with fewer measurement constraints. Specifying it as a measurement would therefore be overconstraint; it might lead to solids that are difficult/impossible to manufacture or erroneous when another measurement is changed. The diagram will specify the actual driving measurements that come from the part's purpose, with the intent to adapt to different real-world requirements. Any CAD tool that works from images is going to have to approximate, which will create over-complex models with to many measurements that are more fragile with respect to changes, whereas a design that has geometrical constraints in place that are logical will be simpler and more adaptable. With functional parts, roughly, form follows function first, and manufacturability second. But you have to understand why, to be able to make a good part. Even (perhaps especially) with 3D printing. But not uniquely. For example, would this tool be able to understand why the draft angles on a plastic part were important, what determines the bend radius of a part that was made from pressed metal, etc.? I must stress that I am an amateur. But my amateur skills have come from reading and learning about CAD and learning what makes a viable design. (Sorry… this was a stupidly long answer but I am hungry and I figured I should try to blurt it out before I have to get up from my desk and cook. I've edited it a lot and cut out a bit that I will probably put in another comment later)
        roel_v 19d ago
- ____tom____ 19d ago
  Maybe not for you, but I'm building miniatures for custom board games. Works great.
  - dofm 19d ago
    Right but there is no meaningful specification failure mode in creative CAD, is there? I mean, yes, image to CAD for a little miniature, I can buy that it is OK. Fun, even, especially when your use is sort of transitory. But this article is talking about functional parts. A functional part exists because of its spec, usually fails because of some combination of its material, manufacture, and spec. And the spec is chosen with that in mind. Even working from a text description of a part is error prone because language is imprecise and interpretable. I just don't understand why AI people want to race past actual proper sensible solutions to a problem just to automate generating from text.
    - elwebmaster 19d ago
      People don't have time (or even mental capability / even more time) to learn CAD but they have a task at hand which they want done. If AI can generate a part which is "good enough" for the user at a cost that the user considers reasonable (I.e. zero) then AI gets used. If a part fails thats rarely a concern because these parts are just 3d printed and likely cost single digit cents in filament. User can always print a new one.
      - dofm 19d ago
        Right, but the thing that I think sort of militates against this scenario is this: If a non-CAD person imagines a part that they need, the chances are very high indeed that either it isn't what they need, can't be made robustly or sensibly, or if it is, it already exists in some meaningful way that can be adapted, because one of tens of millions of other people already wanted it. This scenario — needing something very specific that can be described only in words and nobody else has ever needed before — is almost imaginary. Most stuff just isn't like that. Now… if someone were to design an AI CAD package that could remix objects that exist and combine them, perhaps with a GUI tool that allowed a user to identify attachment points, maybe that would be interesting. But a lot of that has been solved in non-AI GUIs already. Text-to-CAD just isn't as good an idea as it seems. You are not going to be able to magic up some novel invention from a text description without a significant amount of domain knowledge of the words needed to describe a part, and that domain knowledge usually comes from learning CAD! (Bit like getting a coding agent to write really good code) And simple parts, sorry, just don't need much CAD skill. Get a CAD package on a free plan, learn enough to make your thing. You will get so much more out of that and it will be easier to make changes. It'll probably have standard tools for adding threads, even. Even image-to-CAD for a functional part requires a significant amount of understanding of what to photograph and from which angles, etc.
elwebmaster 19d ago
With any tool?

dofm 19d ago

[dead]

TacticalCoder 19d ago

> not interesting as the writeup as very AI sloppish I'm the target for such material for I do use OpenSCAD to model parts I then 3D-print to fix stuff around the house and enhance the cars etc. And yet the writing is totally insufferable AI slop: "All six parts came out printable. Capability turned out to be the boring part of the answer. Where the two diverge is in how they fail." Anyone who writes like this or who enjoys such kind of sentences: from the bottom of my heart, just go fuck yourself.