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Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

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Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#31

Post by alexose »

FractalHQ wrote: post #29
alexose wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering the same thing. Unfortunately, I've found that GPT-4o is much less good at OpenSCAD than it is at Python. It feels totally untrained on the step-by-step logic you need to build things in a programatic way. This is likely a problem with not having enough training data.

Surely all of GitHub is “enough training data”

Well, there's a lot less OpenSCAD on GitHub than Python. At first glance maybe a few orders of magnitude less.

But the bigger problem is (probably) not the lack of code, but the lack of good tutorials and well-documented libraries. And since there's no package manager (https://github.com/openscad/openscad/issues/3479) there's still no agreed-upon way to reuse code between projects.

All this is conjecture, of course. LLMs are mysterious beasts.

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#32

Post by lima »

s1mon wrote: post #27

I've been using parametric CAD (Pro/E / Creo, Solidworks, and Onshape) for 30+ years. Automatically adding sketch constraints is nothing new. Just about any 2D sketching tool out there will have some sort of snapping and/or auto-constraint-adding system. What's often more frustrating is fixing things when they get accidentally over-constrained. Solidworks tries to help with this in the form of cycling through what it…

Agreed, sync modelling in Solid Edge and NX can be really powerful, especially when requirements change unexpectedly.

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#33

Post by lima »

progbits wrote: post #6
baq wrote: post #3

I've no idea what I'm looking at but it looks cool. Could use a bit of an explanation what 'HV lines' are (don't look high voltage to me!) or why 'equating circles' is a good idea for us non-mechanical engineers.

HV probably means horizontal/vertical. You can see the CAD tool snapping to H/V line several times in the demo video and they intentionally make it crooked. Same with circles, if you draw it similar size as previous feature most CAD tools will snap and highlight adding equality constraint. Honestly the demo is both convoluted and not convincing, but also trivial and I don't see where AI comes in. The HV feature can l…

The hard part is not backing yourself into a corner with the feature tree over time. Takes a lot of practice to avoid, and that's something AI could help with. Meanwhile, what their demo does is trivial.

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#34

Post by acyou »

acyou wrote: post #30

Nice work!! I tried to run it, but got an API Error: Due to some internal changes made to the Fusion API, the Add-In: 'sketch_helper' from 'Hestus, Inc.' cannot be loaded. You need to install a new version of the Add-In that is compatible with this version of Fusion. Can you just put it up on the Autodesk app store? I struggle with this model, because of the capture by Autodesk and the other CAD providers. If you rea…

I looked up that error, I don't have any experience with compiled python code, but this is interesting:

Script Error

The message you received results from an add-in loaded on your machine that has compiled Python code that will be incompatible with the next update of Fusion or is incompatible with the current version of Fusion. This message is displayed when Fusion upgrades to a newer version of Python, and add-ins compiled against the previous version will no longer work.

If the message says, "The script will not be supported in the next version.", this is a warning telling you Fusion will no longer be able to load this add-in with the next Fusion update. When you get the update and the add-in quits working, you'll need to get an updated version of the add-in from the Autodesk App Store or directly from the app developer. Unfortunately, you can't preemptively get a newer version because the new version of the add-in will not function with the current version of Fusion, you will need to wait until after the update.

If the message says, "The script is not supported in the current version.", this is an error indicating Fusion could not load the add-in. You need to get an updated version of the add-in from the Autodesk App Store or directly from the app developer. App developers are contacted to let them know they will need to update their apps to be compatible with the new Python version, and the updated apps should be available as soon as the Fusion update goes out. If an update is not available, you should contact the app developer. App Developers

If you're a developer of an add-in for Fusion, use Python, and deliver any pre-compiled modules (.pyc files) with your add-in, this update will break your add-in. It will be broken because pre-compiled modules are tied to the version of Python used to compile them. Add-ins compiled with the current version of Python (3.7) will not be compatible with the updated Python (3.9) and will fail to load. This change DOES NOT affect any add-ins that do not deliver any pre-compiled modules and the.py source code is available. For detailed information about what you need to do to update your add-in and have it available for your customers at the time when the Fusion update goes out, see this forum post with the latest information.

Then it links to this, which is talking about Python 3.7 vs. 3.9.7, but that's from 2022: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-api-and-scripts/import...

Would you need to release the source code then? Would there be the same problem with C++? How can people develop these sorts of apps without having to release the source code?

I'm on Fusion 2.0.19994 x86_64

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#35

Post by delhanty »

s1mon wrote: post #27

I've been using parametric CAD (Pro/E / Creo, Solidworks, and Onshape) for 30+ years. Automatically adding sketch constraints is nothing new. Just about any 2D sketching tool out there will have some sort of snapping and/or auto-constraint-adding system. What's often more frustrating is fixing things when they get accidentally over-constrained. Solidworks tries to help with this in the form of cycling through what it…

> I've been using parametric CAD (Pro/E / Creo, Solidworks, and Onshape) for 30+ years.

True - I implemented the first Solidworks Autodimension sketch as a contractor around 2002 based upon earlier work that I'd done for a consultancy client at D-Cubed in the late 1990s. I'm sure it could be improved with AI and a large data set of sketches though.

> Solidworks tries to help with this in the form of cycling through what it thinks are the most likely constraints to remove and then re-solving the sketch. It's OK, but that sort of tool could be better.

I agree it could be better. The behavior with under-constrained sketches depends on D-Cubed's DCM, and I seem to recall they were rather floppy. It seems kind of ridiculous to make users jump through the hoops of making sketches fully constrained once they've added the constraints they care about.

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#36

Post by kevinsane »

acyou wrote: post #30

Nice work!! I tried to run it, but got an API Error: Due to some internal changes made to the Fusion API, the Add-In: 'sketch_helper' from 'Hestus, Inc.' cannot be loaded. You need to install a new version of the Add-In that is compatible with this version of Fusion. Can you just put it up on the Autodesk app store? I struggle with this model, because of the capture by Autodesk and the other CAD providers. If you rea…

Yes. We messed up, if you redownload hopefully it will work! I'm sorry about that

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#38

Post by acyou »

kevinsane wrote: post #36
acyou wrote: post #30

Nice work!! I tried to run it, but got an API Error: Due to some internal changes made to the Fusion API, the Add-In: 'sketch_helper' from 'Hestus, Inc.' cannot be loaded. You need to install a new version of the Add-In that is compatible with this version of Fusion. Can you just put it up on the Autodesk app store? I struggle with this model, because of the capture by Autodesk and the other CAD providers. If you rea…

Yes. We messed up, if you redownload hopefully it will work! I'm sorry about that

Still didn't work for me. I think it's stuck in my system now.

I think Fusion copies the add-in to a different directory, which I need to go find and manually delete. These add-ins should really have a Windows Installer function so that I can run the uninstaller to remove it, or have it run the uninstaller when the add-in loads or something to wipe the old files.

This is part of the problem with these add ins in general. I just installed this thing on my computer, I can't see the python source code, and what did I install and run??? Even if I could see the source, I don't have time to read it. That's why they have the app store, so that it can get reviewed to make sure it's OK. Any reason why you didn't just publish on there?

I should really take the advice of the old guys who say don't trust it if you can't see the source. I'm sure you mean well, but I would feel better/safer if it was open source.

Is there anyone who has made an AI LLM that reviews source code or an installer that you want to run and tells you if it does anything problematic? Would that also work on compiled Python source code?

Curious if you linked to the Python libraries, or copied them in with the add-in? Or were you able to avoid most libraries for this?

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#39

Post by delhanty »

acyou wrote: post #30

Nice work!! I tried to run it, but got an API Error: Due to some internal changes made to the Fusion API, the Add-In: 'sketch_helper' from 'Hestus, Inc.' cannot be loaded. You need to install a new version of the Add-In that is compatible with this version of Fusion. Can you just put it up on the Autodesk app store? I struggle with this model, because of the capture by Autodesk and the other CAD providers. If you rea…

> The Fusion sketch solver is badly compromised, it can't do more than two or so simple successive Tangent relations without bugging out. And, my experience with Solidworks is the same, not sure if this is still true.

In my experience of building a sketcher at D-Cubed for a consultancy client (1995-2000) on top of D-Cubed's DCM, this is because DCM's curves (which are unbounded BTW) are not directed so that there are lots of erroneous solutions to attempting to constrain G1 chains of tangent bounded curves. For example the Apollonius Problem [1][2] of 3 tangent circles/lines has 2^3 = 8 solutions. IMO if John Owen had chosen directed curves for DCM then dragging configurations of tangent circles would be more stable.

I'll end with a quote from the Preface of Julian Lowell Coolidge's 1916 "A Treatise on the Circle and the Sphere" [3]:

> Among the cartesian theorems there is a sharp sub-division between those where the radius is looked upon as essentially signless and those where a positive or negative radius is allowed.

[1] https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ApolloniusProblem.html

[2] https://observablehq.com/@d3/apollonius-problem#

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Treatise_on_the_Circle_and_t...

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#40

Post by acyou »

delhanty wrote: post #39
acyou wrote: post #30

Nice work!! I tried to run it, but got an API Error: Due to some internal changes made to the Fusion API, the Add-In: 'sketch_helper' from 'Hestus, Inc.' cannot be loaded. You need to install a new version of the Add-In that is compatible with this version of Fusion. Can you just put it up on the Autodesk app store? I struggle with this model, because of the capture by Autodesk and the other CAD providers. If you rea…

> The Fusion sketch solver is badly compromised, it can't do more than two or so simple successive Tangent relations without bugging out. And, my experience with Solidworks is the same, not sure if this is still true. In my experience of building a sketcher at D-Cubed for a consultancy client (1995-2000) on top of D-Cubed's DCM, this is because DCM's curves (which are unbounded BTW) are not directed so that there are…

Thank you for the great response, that does mirror my experience, those tangent curves want to flip/change direction.

I can't believe that all of Fusion, and many other CAM software, is built on such a shaky "sketchy" foundation. It seems that in general 2D sketch constraint models are far from solved in computer science, this seems ridiculous as such a basic and elementary problem. It should be so obvious that the tangent doesn't want to go back on itself to create zero thickness geometry.

Wonder if the 2D sketch experience is much better in Onshape, NX, Catia, etc?

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