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What are people's thoughts on CAD generation with LLMs for OpenSCAD and other proprietary GUI-based softwares? I imagine soon we will also be able to "autocomplete" or "semantically edit" feature trees in SolidWorks, Fusion, etc.
Wow, looks like the project might still be alive. Hopefully we get a new release year.
it is still alive yes the repo is active.
A few examples of simple fillets in SOLIDWORKS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f78gblpqxHc
Higher level continuity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5QN40d02cw
A good example of nontrivial surfacing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cujS1icUTtg (the entire channel is a goldmine of surfacing tutorials)
Not every part needs G3 smooth curves, but being able use those tools when appropriate is a superpower.
Don't miss the https://github.com/nophead/NopSCADlib library for OpenSCAD, which includes a tremendous amount of useful shapes, functions, and the ability to produce exploded diagrams, assembly instructions, etc.
Don't miss the https://github.com/nophead/NopSCADlib library for OpenSCAD, which includes a tremendous amount of useful shapes, functions, and the ability to produce exploded diagrams, assembly instructions, etc.
Great library, thanks for sharing!
I've made a bunch of stuff in OpenSCAD and it can be really nice to work with but... it does have a bunch of weirdnesses like not being to find the size of a compound object, having to micro-manage your objects to avoid the spinning beach ball render, fillets/chamfers/rounded edges/etc. are dark arts, etc. If you're basically sticking simple shapes together or cutting simple shapes out of other shapes, it's fine enou…
Yeah, it has its charms but... Good luck making a filet or a chamfer between two faces whose intersection has a non-trivial placement. Being able to easily reference existing edges and faces for future operations is one of the things that make other CAD so simple.
https://github.com/traverseda/PySdfScad
I'd also love to find the time to rewrite the geometry kernel in something like taichi (python DSL running on GPU) or maybe JAX instead of numpy. And of course it doesn't yet pass most of openscad's test cases.
He is actively looking for gig-work or potentially something more significant, so if anyone on HN is looking to get something 3D-cad related or even some advanced training, please reach out to me (email is on my profile). I will happily make an intro.
OpenSCAD is an ideal tool for adding flexible 3D wizardry to a website or app programatically.
As impressive as NopSCADlib and BOSL2 are (and OMG they are, when you consider what they have to work with!), OpenSCAD is a one-way, declarative CSG environment that essentially only outputs mesh formats. It's really not that much better than working with three-dimensional pixels. You won't really be able to analyse, iterate over or measure your models, easily build on faces, do easy chamfers or fillets, export STEP files, make use of constraint-based designs, model assemblies, or so many other things that "CAD" means in the 21st century. All the tools that help you do this on OpenSCAD are layers and layers of task-specific hacks and clever bodges.
I totally get wanting to make models with version-controlled text files instead of GUI CAD (which can be a sort of weird battle to learn for a programmer), and I get wanting to avoid FreeCAD. I just don't really get wanting to limit oneself to such a limited concept of a 3D "model"!
The three alternative systems I mention are all based around bindings to (or in Replicad's case, cross-compilation of) OpenCASCADE, which is a bRep CAD kernel capable of much richer interactions. It is not without its faults, but arguably code-CAD spares you from some of the inscrutability that trips up FreeCAD's interactive model.
If you want to do code-CAD for anything substantial and you haven't yet developed a significant dependency on OpenSCAD, do your brain a favour and spend at least some time with CadQuery, Build123D or (if you prefer JS to Python) Replicad. As impressive as NopSCADlib and BOSL2 are (and OMG they are, when you consider what they have to work with!) , OpenSCAD is a one-way, declarative CSG environment that essentially on…
But that said, this is all correct. OpenSCAD is actually an extremely limited environment and much more expressive tools exist in the same "code-based 3D modelling" space.
I work out of a local Hackerspace here in Austin and we happen to have one of the core contributors to OpenSCAD here. He re-wrote much of the code in C++ to optimize the core algorithms and significantly improve performance using OpenGL. He is actively looking for gig-work or potentially something more significant, so if anyone on HN is looking to get something 3D-cad related or even some advanced training, please re…