Text-to-CAD? No please, sounds like a really bad idea.
how come?
Show HN: AI CAD Harness
51–60 of 108 posts
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#52As 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.
Isn't AutoLISP the traditional answer here?
Or these days, Dynamo?
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#53Been following you guys a while, seems like you've been gaining some traction recently, lets goo and congrats!
I have been working on GrandpaCAD[0] for a while, a very similar product. I thought of you as my biggest competitors but noticed recently you are focusing more and more on professionals while I am focusing on total noobs in modeling who just want to whip out a quick model. So I guess we are not competitors anymore?
My evals[1] show that Opus 4.7 and GPT 5.5 are very comparable in terms of generation quality, but GPT 5.5 is slower and costs sooo much more in my harness. And the original breakthrough model was Gemini 3.1. I'm curious do you have more written about your benchmarks setup?
If you want to chat email is in my profile. Btw, just met "your"(?) neighbour on a plane a couple of days ago. World is small.
[1]: https://grandpacad.com/en/blog/public-benchmarks-misled-me-o...
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#54Text-to-CAD? No please, sounds like a really bad idea.
how come?
Well, clunkiness and inherent imprecision for one? We don't need to turn every determinisic application into an LLM wrapper, which produces corrrect outputs x℅ of the time, where x < 100. I can only imagine the negative impact if auch tools become widely spread, we already see the damage the AI slop is creating in hyperscaler infrastructure, software, content etc. To now translate this into the world of physical machines and structures, bears even greater risk. Plus your subscription model is a. super-intransparent, based on token usage b. Risky, as your pricing is clearly dependent on the AI-model providers billing, which as we see from the recent GH Copilot episode, is set up for significant hikes across the board.
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#55Been following you guys a while, seems like you've been gaining some traction recently, lets goo and congrats! I have been working on GrandpaCAD[0] for a while, a very similar product. I thought of you as my biggest competitors but noticed recently you are focusing more and more on professionals while I am focusing on total noobs in modeling who just want to whip out a quick model. So I guess we are not competitors a…
Lol which neighbour? That's so random
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
how come?
Well, clunkiness and inherent imprecision for one? We don't need to turn every determinisic application into an LLM wrapper, which produces corrrect outputs x℅ of the time, where x < 100. I can only imagine the negative impact if auch tools become widely spread, we already see the damage the AI slop is creating in hyperscaler infrastructure, software, content etc. To now translate this into the world of physical mach…
In transparent in what sense?
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, Cad…
I second the friend's opinion. A lot of the people who post online have no experience with the paid PCB tools and those tools already have quite a lot of automation, and the automation interfaces work between different CAD & EDA vendors. Shared, hierarchical, and repurposed schematics are also totally a thing. I spend almost no time on boiler plate stuff. And with good constraints, which require serious thought and u…
> those tools already have quite a lot of automation
Not to mention the level of customization and tooling that companies like Apple have themselves built out around the PCB tool. Playing around with Cadence at home is going to be a different experience than using it at a large tier1 company.
I was mostly sticking with more systemic factors against AI adoption, but I agree with you completely.
As you said, professional PCB design has largely automated the easy stuff, and the hard stuff is going to be largely illegible to an LLM. A competent engineer could route a 10L HDI board which powers on in under a week, getting it ready for mass production is what takes the other 8+ months and 5 design spins, and I don't see much opportunity for AI to help there.
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#58Mechanical Engineer here, stop using AI to deal with the most enjoyable part of design PLEASE
An automated drafting too where I can describe design intent and requirements would be a million times better, especially if it is CAD context aware.
I would say around 5-20% of mENG is not actually modelling, the endless pursuit of text to cad and other ai works is both not helpful and not enjoyable
(PS: The feature tree renaming does look very useful)
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, clunkiness and inherent imprecision for one? We don't need to turn every determinisic application into an LLM wrapper, which produces corrrect outputs x℅ of the time, where x < 100. I can only imagine the negative impact if auch tools become widely spread, we already see the damage the AI slop is creating in hyperscaler infrastructure, software, content etc. To now translate this into the world of physical mach…
In transparent in what sense?
Not just intransparent, but also unfair. Why? I think you know this very well, but lets say I need to reprompt your LLM wrapper x times, because, as usually ia the case with these slot machines, they did not give me what I asked for. So now I burn additional tokens you will happily bill me for, without having it in my power to impact how well the underlying LLM works. So its neither under my control, nor do I have a clue as to how to keep token usage under control. So your model for pricing is neither transparent nor fair to me. And as is taught in every business 101, for a business to auccessfuly acquire customers, customers must see the price as transparent AND perceive it as fair.
Re: Show HN: AI CAD Harness
#60Been following you guys a while, seems like you've been gaining some traction recently, lets goo and congrats! I have been working on GrandpaCAD[0] for a while, a very similar product. I thought of you as my biggest competitors but noticed recently you are focusing more and more on professionals while I am focusing on total noobs in modeling who just want to whip out a quick model. So I guess we are not competitors a…
Lol which neighbour? That's so random
Gregor! Not sure I want to say more on here.