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Show HN: AI CAD Harness

fusion.adam.new

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Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#31

Post by GorbachevyChase »

jrflo wrote: post #20

As someone with a background in mechanical engineering, I'd love to be able to automate CAD design as it's quite tedious and only fun like 5% of the time, but I've tried these tools and I really don't think text-to-CAD is the right approach. It usually takes longer for me to come up with an accurate written prompt to fully dimension what I need than to just grab my space mouse and do it.

Worc.dev might be for you. I might call it Jupyter for engineers. Founder is a Mechanical

I seem to see one or two of these CAD projects a week. It’s cool, but the real value is design automation specific to my problem domain. Modeling isn’t usually that hard if you’re comfortable with the software. It would probably take as long to just think about what you need. I find more difficulty in maintaining coherence in complex projects that doesn’t involve me forcing a whole team to go all in on some stupid PaaS. A tip for founders: if you’re adding steps to the work process, you’re not helping.

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#32

Post by ur-whale »

zachdive wrote: post #28
ur-whale wrote: post #26

> Adam is now a harness that integrates directly with your CAD It does not integrate with "my" CAD, which happens to be none of the two closed-source, closed-ecosystem, commercial products you built your tool for.

Which is your CAD? We also have an opensource version that we actively maintain: https://github.com/Adam-CAD/CADAM

> Which is your CAD?

Depends on what I'm doing, but for serious projects, I try to stick to FreeCAD (which has a python API btw) and avoid the commercial packages whenever I can.

Like others have remarked, the feature set, in particular of the geometry engine, is really not at the level of commercial packages like Fusion, Onshape and the rest, but 90% of the time FreeCAD is good enough.

However, FreeCAD's UI is truly an abomination, even with the recent "improvements". The workflow enforce by the package is a freaking death march.

[EDIT]: I am also a huge fan of building objects with code, especially for parametric stuff, but then there is nothing out there that can really do the code -> model -> 3D viz -> code -> model -> ... loop tightly enough yet.

I truly believe that AI + CAD is blue ocean territory, but please, please don't make the lock-in the already predatory actors in the space have on the market even worse by building your stuff for their product.

Especially, don't help Autodesk, they're a freaking cancer on the industry.

If we could drive FreeCAD using an AI, man that would really rock and make a huge difference for the recognition of the package, especially if you figure our a way to have users work around the horrible UI.

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#33

Post by GorbachevyChase »

cjtrowbridge wrote: post #2

There are more elegant solutions to this problem. Why are you trying to get an LLM to work with bloated, archaic tools that you have to rent from a feudal lord in the cloud when there are free open-source alternatives like OpenSCAD. This is just one example of a superior tool that's natively easy for LLMs to interact with, because the source files are just composable scripts containing lists of shapes and then lists…

Thanks for sharing. OpenSCAD skills seems like a great idea.

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#34

Post by zachdive »

ur-whale wrote: post #32
zachdive wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is your CAD? We also have an opensource version that we actively maintain: https://github.com/Adam-CAD/CADAM

> Which is your CAD? Depends on what I'm doing, but for serious projects, I try to stick to FreeCAD (which has a python API btw) and avoid the commercial packages whenever I can. Like others have remarked, the feature set, in particular of the geometry engine, is really not at the level of commercial packages like Fusion, Onshape and the rest, but 90% of the time FreeCAD is good enough. However, FreeCAD's UI is truly…

I highly encourage you to try our opensource version: https://adam.new/cadam

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#35

Post by ur-whale »

zachdive wrote: post #34
ur-whale wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is your CAD? Depends on what I'm doing, but for serious projects, I try to stick to FreeCAD (which has a python API btw) and avoid the commercial packages whenever I can. Like others have remarked, the feature set, in particular of the geometry engine, is really not at the level of commercial packages like Fusion, Onshape and the rest, but 90% of the time FreeCAD is good enough. However, FreeCAD's UI is truly…

I highly encourage you to try our opensource version: https://adam.new/cadam

> I highly encourage you to try our opensource version

I need to sign in just to try your tool ?

It's a joke, right?

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#36

Post by donatj »

My friend is an electrical engineer. He designs circuit boards for a living. We were having dinner the other night, and when the topic of AI came up he told me rather confidently that he didn't think AI was coming for his job anytime soon.

I kind of cautiously disagreed. He told me that the applications he used had no tooling for AI.

I basically said "give it six months". I think in my googling now, it's already here.

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#37

Post by jlarocco »

cjtrowbridge wrote: post #2

There are more elegant solutions to this problem. Why are you trying to get an LLM to work with bloated, archaic tools that you have to rent from a feudal lord in the cloud when there are free open-source alternatives like OpenSCAD. This is just one example of a superior tool that's natively easy for LLMs to interact with, because the source files are just composable scripts containing lists of shapes and then lists…

Get back to us when you've used OpenSCAD to design and build something like an airplane.

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#38

Post by zachdive »

donatj wrote: post #36

My friend is an electrical engineer. He designs circuit boards for a living. We were having dinner the other night, and when the topic of AI came up he told me rather confidently that he didn't think AI was coming for his job anytime soon. I kind of cautiously disagreed. He told me that the applications he used had no tooling for AI. I basically said "give it six months". I think in my googling now, it's already here…

The new models that have come out can now see

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#39

Post by zachdive »

ur-whale wrote: post #35
zachdive wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly encourage you to try our opensource version: https://adam.new/cadam

> I highly encourage you to try our opensource version I need to sign in just to try your tool ? It's a joke, right?

or run it locally: https://github.com/Adam-CAD/CADAM

Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness

#40

Post by SauntSolaire »

donatj wrote: post #36

My friend is an electrical engineer. He designs circuit boards for a living. We were having dinner the other night, and when the topic of AI came up he told me rather confidently that he didn't think AI was coming for his job anytime soon. I kind of cautiously disagreed. He told me that the applications he used had no tooling for AI. I basically said "give it six months". I think in my googling now, it's already here…

I largely agree with your friend. There's a big difference between it being possible, and it being adopted. A startup could come out with cutting edge AI integrated eCAD tools tomorrow, and ten years from now Apple will still be using Cadence to design the iPhone.

Basically, unless the legacy eCAD companies decide to add it themselves, there's too much pain involved in switching tools — and even with that caveat, Cadence specifically is too much of a dinosaur to integrate it effectively anyway.

That said, there's a big distinction depending on whether your friend works primarily on the schematic or layout side.

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