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Teaching LLMs how to solid model

willpatrick.xyz

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Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#111

Post by aredox »

cdecl wrote: post #107
aredox wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Saying "just text prediction" understates how big a deal that is. Here on HN we often see posts insisting on the importance of "first principles". Your embrace of "magic" - an unknown black box who does seemingly wonderful things that usually blow up to one's face and have a hidden cost - is the opposite of that. LLMs are just text prediction. That's what they are. >Why can LLMs generally write code that even compil…

> LLMs are just text prediction. That's what they are. This sort of glib talking point really doesn't pass muster, because if you showed the current state of affairs to a random developer from 2015, you would absolutely blow their damned socks off.

They would be blown off by the "Unreasonable Effectiveness of [text prediction]", but it is still text prediction.

That's the very root cause why we still have unsolved problems like the inability to get the same answer to the same questions, the inability to do riguorous maths or logic (any question that only has one good answer, in fact) and hallucinations!

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#112

Post by cdecl »

aredox wrote: post #111
cdecl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are just text prediction. That's what they are. This sort of glib talking point really doesn't pass muster, because if you showed the current state of affairs to a random developer from 2015, you would absolutely blow their damned socks off.

They would be blown off by the "Unreasonable Effectiveness of [text prediction]", but it is still text prediction. That's the very root cause why we still have unsolved problems like the inability to get the same answer to the same questions, the inability to do riguorous maths or logic (any question that only has one good answer, in fact) and hallucinations!

The problem is not the text prediction, which nobody denies, rather the "just" which minimizes its impact.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#113

Post by geor9e »

klysm wrote: post #66
geor9e wrote: post #58

I get that CAD interfaces are terrible - but if I imagine the technological utopia of the future - using the english language as the interface sounds terrible no matter how well you do it. Unless you are paraplegic and speaking is your only means of manipulating the world. I much prefer the direction of sculpting with my hands in VR, pulling the dimensions out with a pinch, snapping things parellel with my fine motor…

I’m not sure that CAD interfaces are terrible, it’s just hard work

That's what they would have said about drafting tools in the 1880s, command line AutoCAD in the 1980s. Try to imagine the 2080s, or the most visionary sci-fi movie about that future - one of those movies where people look back and says "wow they were close!". Suppose a character wanted to get an idea for a three-dimensional form from their brain onto some medium. They're not going to be clicking a plane, clicking sketch, clicking some lines, tapping the dimension hotkey, twisting their spacemouse a bit with their left hand, clicking extrude, dragging, tapping into their numpad the height, etc etc. We use the clunky interface of our age.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#114

Post by klysm »

geor9e wrote: post #113
klysm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure that CAD interfaces are terrible, it’s just hard work

That's what they would have said about drafting tools in the 1880s, command line AutoCAD in the 1980s. Try to imagine the 2080s, or the most visionary sci-fi movie about that future - one of those movies where people look back and says "wow they were close!". Suppose a character wanted to get an idea for a three-dimensional form from their brain onto some medium. They're not going to be clicking a plane, clicking ske…

Perhaps, but the hard part about CAD to me isn’t the interference, but rather the specification of the geometries and the dependency structure. That’s the hard part that’s hiding in the background. It’s kind of like getting stuck on the syntax of a programming language instead of being worried about the semantics

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#115

Post by abe_m »

wavefrontbakc wrote: post #84
jillesvangurp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also going to be about diagnosing issues. "This part broke right here, explain why and come up with a solution", "Evaluate the robustness of this solution", "Can I save some material and reduce the weight", etc. Those are the kind of high level questions that an LLM with a decent understanding of CAD and design might be able to deal with soon and it will help speed up expensive design iterations. A neat trick wi…

I think the cost of mistakes is the major driving force behind where you can adopt tools like these. Generating a picture of a chair with five legs? No big deal. Generating supports for a bridge that'll collapse next week? Big problem. > It will point out things that are unclear, etc. You can go far beyond just micro managing incremental edits to some thing. When prompted an LLM will also point it out when it's perfe…

I doubt that an LLM for CAD would be using the free-form generation that seems to lead to the 5-legged chair.

I suspect it will be more of a tool calling layer that is building up the model based on the output of more deterministic tools. "I need this bearing mounted here" -> LLM reads the part number of the bearing, does a RAG search for the bearing properties to get sizes, looks up what type of fits should be used in the scenario, feeds that info into a function that generates the appropriate seat geometry. Rather than trying to morph triangles into sort-of-kind-of a cylindrical face that may or may have the 0.0XXmm interference that is the difference between success or failure of the fitment.

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