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Claude Tips for 3D Work

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Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#21

Post by Schlagbohrer »

StephenHerlihyy wrote: post #5

Honestly understanding and applying 3d transformations should be a new LLM benchmark. Three.js, OpenSCAD, even Nano Banano prompts. The moment you add that extra dimension any semblance of ‘intelligence’ goes right out the window. Every model out there seems to spin themselves in circles trying to logic through it with no success.

As soon as LLMs are doing serious junior level 3D modeling and mechanical CAD design, that's going to lead to some wild iteration loops with rapid prototyping. Very exciting.

Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#22

Post by Schlagbohrer »

Razengan wrote: post #16

Claude is terrible. I've been using Codex for a few months and decided to give Opus a try and see how it is. After asking it to review a single file in a simple platformer game, it goes: > Coyote jump fires in the wrong direction (falling UP with inverted gravity) var fallVelocity: float = body.velocity.y * body.up_direction.y I'm like ok, suggest a fix > I owe you a correction: after re-analyzing the math more caref…

Do you find Gemini or ChatGPT or Grok to be better?

I am currently using Claude as I find it to be better than the others at the free tier.

Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#23

Post by ponyous »

This "screenshot -> refine loop" is a great strategy and I have built it into my 3D Modeling product as well[0], but had to disable it because it would often quadruple the costs and the product is already expensive.

I am on standby to enable it though, just need a price to drop a bit more!

[0]: https://grandpacad.com

Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#25

Post by prawn »

ponyous wrote: post #23

This "screenshot -> refine loop" is a great strategy and I have built it into my 3D Modeling product as well[0], but had to disable it because it would often quadruple the costs and the product is already expensive. I am on standby to enable it though, just need a price to drop a bit more! [0]: https://grandpacad.com

My late maternal grandfather was Slovenian, so I enjoyed your project's backstory. I've mucked around with ChatGPT and OpenSCAD so can identify with that also. Great concept and best of luck!

Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#26

Post by hristian »

mungoman2 wrote: post #2

Really good. I’ve struggled with the same thing. > Instead of expecting it to understand my requests, I almost always build tooling first to give us a shared language to discuss the project. This is probably the key. I’ve found this to be true in general. Building simple tools that the model can use help frame the problem in a very useful way.

[dead]

Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#27

Post by mijoharas »

bambax wrote: post #8

Just yesterday I used Claude to great effect in FreeCAD to model a church tower. The tower has a square base and an octagonal top, but connecting the two by creating a loft using the GUI in FreeCAD results in a wrong and ugly abomination. Claude understood the problem and produced elegant Python code that worked perfectly the first time. So I continued and described the other features of the tower to Claude, who code…

Can you describe how you hooked Claude up to freecad?

I've messed around with freecad a bit (I'm still a beginner) and was just saying today I'd like to play around with trying to use llm's for 3d modelling.

EDIT: I found this mcp[0] after searching, was it that? The docs mention Claude desktop, but I assume it works fine with Claude code too, right?

[0] https://github.com/neka-nat/freecad-mcp

Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#29

Post by willis936 »

bambax wrote: post #8

Just yesterday I used Claude to great effect in FreeCAD to model a church tower. The tower has a square base and an octagonal top, but connecting the two by creating a loft using the GUI in FreeCAD results in a wrong and ugly abomination. Claude understood the problem and produced elegant Python code that worked perfectly the first time. So I continued and described the other features of the tower to Claude, who code…

I've been struggling to get Claude or Gemini to make a project enclosure. I've got it down to a decent set of requirements and have been trying FreeCAD Python output, OpenSCAD, and Build123d. Most attempts fail to generate output (after several minutes of thinking and getting a good way there). When attempts don't fail they get aspects wrong. At this point I think my workflow needs to be breaking up the request into a series of functions for each feature then iterating on the overall model.

Re: Claude Tips for 3D Work

#30

Post by snide »

mijoharas wrote: post #27
bambax wrote: post #8

Just yesterday I used Claude to great effect in FreeCAD to model a church tower. The tower has a square base and an octagonal top, but connecting the two by creating a loft using the GUI in FreeCAD results in a wrong and ugly abomination. Claude understood the problem and produced elegant Python code that worked perfectly the first time. So I continued and described the other features of the tower to Claude, who code…

Can you describe how you hooked Claude up to freecad? I've messed around with freecad a bit (I'm still a beginner) and was just saying today I'd like to play around with trying to use llm's for 3d modelling. EDIT: I found this mcp[0] after searching, was it that? The docs mention Claude desktop, but I assume it works fine with Claude code too, right? [0] https://github.com/neka-nat/freecad-mcp

Hey, I'm the OP. I originally started with FreeCAD. There's not much to "hook up" to Claude. It can natively write for FreeCAD. You don't need to use the FreeCAD editor and can point to an external, local file with an import. At that point there's not much more than pointing your LLM to that file. You'll need to tell the FreeCAD desktop app to update on changes.

Eventually I moved to JSCAD for the application mentioned in my blog post because I realized I wanted a more complex UI (which meant a web app) than what FreeCAD provided natively. If you're looking for something simple with some var statements though, FreeCAD might be enough.

In my experience, the MCP isn't really needed. Claude at least already can write the code pretty well. The problems are more with getting it to understand the output, which the blog post covers.

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