I’ve been playing in this space as a moderately experienced hobbyist - mainly for 3D printing functional parts.

I’m using a single repo for all my models and Claude with build123d (plus a VS Code viz extension). Over time, I’ve built up a little folder of useful skills and I’m generally getting satisfactory results.

That said, I have had my eye on CadQuery and am looking for an excuse to try it. For those in the know: how does it compare to build123d?

I've also been playing around in this area and starting getting somewhat useable around Opus 4.8. It has been able to generate some quite impressive designs, but for me it has been quite hard to get the model to understand what exactly I want modeled.

Are you willing to share your work?

Mine is available at https://jnslmk.github.io/build123d-models/?model=drill_stora... One of the things I've found more useful is the generation of a static site to view and download the models. With WASM you can make minor adjustments directly in browser

The fundamental difference is that CadQuery uses that jQuery-inspired fluent syntax, with a sort of metalanguage for some aspects, and Build123D is more pythonic with two different more procedural syntaxes.

The other big difference (which I have only read about) is in the way their assembly constraints work; again Build123D takes the more procedural approach (declaring "joints" etc.)

CadQuery came first; Build123D is sort of a more pythonic, robust restatement of it.