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Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

hestus.co

61–70 of 88 posts

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#61

This is cool but I'd like to see some focus for civil engineers doing land development. 98% of them use autocad, and are stuck with it, but also they only really use no more than 100 different commands - it's just the scale of everything that's difficult and really matters.

If any founders are interested I'd be happy to go into more detail.

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#62
post #50
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an expert but surely an under constrained sketch is not a completed sketch. Does "fully constrained" mean the simplest set of constraints that yields a shape (volume/hypervolume)? Or something rather more complicated? A simple yes or no, with a pointer to a paper will do!

To add to delhanty's reply, a "degree of freedom" can be thought of as a dimension of the drawing that can be changed or "stretched" or moved without violating a constraint (this is slightly inaccurate, but it's a good start). In a CAD program, a fully constrained drawing can't be freely stretched or dragged around; the program won't let you and the drawing will feel "rigid". It's very intuitive if you play around wi…

In addition to Solvespace there is the nascent (but surprisingly polished):

https://dune3d.org/

the Github page of which has the following footnote:

>I ended up directly using solvespace's solver instead of the suggested wrapper code since it didn't expose all of the features I needed. I also had to patch the solver to make it sufficiently fast for the kinds of equations I was generating by symbolically solving equations where applicable. ↩

Which really impressed me because it was the first graphical and interactive 3D program I tried which felt sort of comfortable and understandable (which is why I mostly use OpenSCAD and similar programmatic approaches).

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#64

Good luck guys! I watched the video on YT - hopefully will get around to trying the Fusion 360 add-in at some point. Does the current add-in use AI at all? What is your plan when, in the event of you getting some traction, Autodesk etc. copy you innovations into the main product? As per my other comments [1][2], I worked on this area at D-Cubed and Solidworks from 1995 to 2002. Feel free to connect with me via twitte…

Great questions. This beta version uses very little, but we hope to incorporate more over time, hoping to get more accurate and better suggestions! If we can get the entire industry producing better products, everyone wins. This is something we feel passionate about, and think there must be a better way. I would love to get in contact with you to chat more!

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#65
post #57

I have been using fusion360, at least once a week for 7 years. I don't find I am ever bogged down in tedious, repetitive tasks. The sort of thing in your video is completely second nature to me and the least of my problems. This said, it sure looks cool. What would be good would be something more like "I want to make a shape centered on this object on this other complex object, what's the best way to do it with the s…

We would love all the feedback possible! We want to make something that people want to use. Given that, we do want to eventually add features such as recommending fixes and best practices. Regarding a chat interface is something we want to tackle, but may be a little ways away :)

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#66
post #2

I've used CAD nearly every day for my entire engineering career, and this feels like a logical step. My day is filled with a tedium of micromanaging Solidworks or NX to simply do what I need. It takes very little time for me to envision a solution, but it takes ages of clunking through UI to actualize it. I'll be on board once you have SW support, I'd be interested in implementing it immediately. My questions: 1) Wha…

Sohrab and I have been in deep tech for most of our careers. For me personally, most of my background focused on system integration and design. Working closely with the mechanical engineers, I encountered multiple just annoying paper cuts that I felt could be solve with software. We hope that we can create software where it is just easier and faster to prototype and test things in real life. This release was our attempt of a first baby step in that overarching goal

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#67

That bit about auto-generating BOMs is awesome. Any chance you've thought about supporting the engineer with cost-saving recommendations? I met a bunch of aerospace engineers a long time ago -- thinking about working on a software product in contract manufacturing or PDM -- and a common theme was the struggle to optimize the design for cost of manufacture. Seems like something you guys are thinking about if focused o…

Ha, we had similar thoughts. It is a path we want to go down eventually, but one step at a time :)

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#68

This is cool but I'd like to see some focus for civil engineers doing land development. 98% of them use autocad, and are stuck with it, but also they only really use no more than 100 different commands - it's just the scale of everything that's difficult and really matters.

If any founders are interested I'd be happy to go into more detail.

Yes! would love to chat, please ping us on the contact page and I'll try to get back to you

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#69
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 love onshape and the capabilities featurescript offers. I wish they had a hobbyist pricing that only provided minor QOL offerings like the ability to make some things private. As long as it remains free for public use though I am very happy using it.

I was wondering if AI might help with writing FeatureScript. I’ve only scratched the surface but have leaned heavily on what other people have written for documentation.

Re: Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD

#70

Was a Mechanical Design Engineer for about a decade. Personally, the CAD part was the easy and fun part (Used Solidworks, Creo, Inventor, Catia v5 extensively. Professionally trained in all four as well). The “tedious” part was SAP (part number and material management), drafting, ECN/R/O, BOM handling, etc. I would be more excited for “AI” for PLM like Windchill, TeamCenter, or Cadedge (or whatever SAP PLM packages y…

We are on the same page. We absolutely want to help out with most of those tasks as well. We especially want to help with part selection and BOM creation. However, material/inventory management I will admit, wasn't on our roadmap. Although absolutely important, we felt that there were many solutions already existing in that space. If I am wrong, I would love to chat more! Please ping us on the contact us page, and I'll try to get back to you!
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