This is a neat idea and I quite like some of the syntax, but what is this for? I have a hard time seeing this gaining traction over traditional sketch-based CAD for a number of reasons, so is it just meant to be a toy?

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raddan an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I would personally prefer to work with a language-based CAD than a strictly graphical one. Especially for parametric kinds of objects. Now that 3D printing is going mainstream, I am certain that new and interesting things are still to come in CAD.

	▲	krisoft an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Curious. How much experience do you have with any form of CAD? Is the preference based on that you tried graphical CAD software and you found them lacking, or is it based on imagining how they might work? Last week at the hackspace someone asked me to quickly design a manifold which holds together a scuba mouth piece, a 48mm diameter valve and a nato 40mm screw fitting. They wanted to minimise the internal tidal volume of the manifold, while keeping enough clearance for the tubes connected to it. We ended up connecting the 3 fittings in a Y-shape and lofted the pipes together. Without seeing the resulting shape I can’t even start to guess how many edges it would have. And I have no idea how I would refer to which edges i want filleted. How would you approach something like that with your prefered method?

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sho_hn 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hmm - are you familiar with OpenSCAD, which is highly popular? This would appear to compete there. There's a few others, e.g. CadQuery.

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lovemenot 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Such languages can be amenable to LLM generation, reducing barriers to entry.

	▲	jwagenet 31 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The hard part with 3d part creation isn’t the graphical interface or language, it’s actually describing and translating part requirements to a manufacturable design, weighing material, weight, fit, geometric, and cost tradeoffs. Openscad, opencascade, etc have been around for a long time and have specs for describing features in a way that llm should be able to handle, but if all the part constraints were available it’s far faster to make accurately in Solidworks.
	▲	aclindsa an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Just yesterday I had an LLM write an openscad module for generating a 2d rounded rectangle. It worked great! I then tried to get it to write a module to extrude a 2d shape into a 3d shape and it failed spectacularly several times before I gave up.
	▲	2muchcoffeeman an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I’ve tried getting Gemini to follow descriptions to generate a simple object in OpenScad. I finally got it to do what I wanted. But I’m much much faster and if didn’t have some amateur CAD experience, I don’t know I would have ever succeeded.

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Normal_gaussian 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm a much more capable of designing useful models by programming than I am in using CAD software. The way I think about the construction of models is much more suited to standard programming techniques. I freely admit there is probably immense value in using the industry standard tools instead... I've printed a few projects now which I used OpenSCAD to design, and it went fairly well, and I'm confident in them. OpenSCAD is a bit of a PITA though.

I have no idea if this approach might gain traction over sketch-based CAD, I doubt it; yet this approach has a strong chance of expanding the space.