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Teaching LLMs how to solid model

willpatrick.xyz

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Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#21

Post by alnwlsn »

The future: "and I want a 3mm hole in one side of the plate. No the other side. No, not like that, at the bottom. Now make it 10mm from the other hole. No the other hole. No, up not sideways. Wait, which way is up? Never mind, I'll do it myself."

I'm having trouble understanding why you would want to do this. A good interface between what I want and the model I will make is to draw a picture, not write an essay. This is already (more or less) how Solidworks operates. AI might be able to turn my napkin sketch into a model, but I would still need to draw something, and I'm not good at drawing.

The bottleneck continues to be having a good enough description to make what you want. I have serious doubts that even a skilled person will be able to do it efficiently with text alone. Some combo of drawing and point+click would be much better.

This would be useful for short enough tasks like "change all the #6-32 threads to M3" though. To do so without breaking the feature tree would be quite impressive.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#22

Post by monoid73 »

this is one of the more compelling "LLM meets real-world tool" use cases i've seen. openSCAD makes a great testbed since it's text-based and deterministic, but i wonder what the limits are once you get into more complex assemblies or freeform surfacing.

curious if the real unlock long-term will come from hybrid workflows, LLMs proposing parameterized primitives, humans refining them in UI, then LLMs iterating on feedback. kind of like pair programming, but for CAD.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#23

Post by wgpatrick »

alnwlsn wrote: post #21

The future: "and I want a 3mm hole in one side of the plate. No the other side. No, not like that, at the bottom. Now make it 10mm from the other hole. No the other hole. No, up not sideways. Wait, which way is up? Never mind, I'll do it myself." I'm having trouble understanding why you would want to do this. A good interface between what I want and the model I will make is to draw a picture, not write an essay. This…

Yeah - I fully agree with this POV. From a UX/UI POV, I think this is where things are headed. I talk about this a bit at the end of the piece.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#24

Post by wgpatrick »

monoid73 wrote: post #22

this is one of the more compelling "LLM meets real-world tool" use cases i've seen. openSCAD makes a great testbed since it's text-based and deterministic, but i wonder what the limits are once you get into more complex assemblies or freeform surfacing. curious if the real unlock long-term will come from hybrid workflows, LLMs proposing parameterized primitives, humans refining them in UI, then LLMs iterating on feed…

Complex assemblies completely fall on their face. It's pretty fun/hilarious to ask it to do something like: "Make a mid-century modern coffee table" -- the result will have floating components, etc.

Yes to your thought about the hybrid workflows. There's a lot of UI/UX to figure out about how to go back and forth with the LLM to make this useful.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#25

Post by itissid »

alnwlsn wrote: post #21

The future: "and I want a 3mm hole in one side of the plate. No the other side. No, not like that, at the bottom. Now make it 10mm from the other hole. No the other hole. No, up not sideways. Wait, which way is up? Never mind, I'll do it myself." I'm having trouble understanding why you would want to do this. A good interface between what I want and the model I will make is to draw a picture, not write an essay. This…

> and I want a 3mm hole in one side of the plate. No the other side. No, not like that, at the bottom. Now make it 10mm from the other hole. No the other hole. No, up not sideways.

One thing that is interesting here is you can read faster than TTS to absorb info. But you can speak much faster than you can type. So is it all that typing that's the problem or could be just an interface problem? and in your example, you could also just draw with your hand(wrist sensor) + talk.

As I've been using agents to code this way. Its way faster.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#26

Post by fragmede »

alnwlsn wrote: post #21

The future: "and I want a 3mm hole in one side of the plate. No the other side. No, not like that, at the bottom. Now make it 10mm from the other hole. No the other hole. No, up not sideways. Wait, which way is up? Never mind, I'll do it myself." I'm having trouble understanding why you would want to do this. A good interface between what I want and the model I will make is to draw a picture, not write an essay. This…

talking to my computer and having it create things is pretty danged cool. Voice input takes out so much friction that, yeah, maybe it would be faster with a mouse and keyboard, but if I can just talk with my computer? I can do it while I'm walking around and thinking.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#27

Post by jmcpheron »

It's so cool to see this post, and so many other commenters with similar projects.

I had the same thought recently and designed a flexible bracelet for pi Day using openscad and a mix of some the major AI providers. I'm cool to see other people are doing similar projects. I'm surprised how well I can do basic shapes and open scad with these AI assistants.

https://github.com/jmcpheron/counted-out-pi

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#28

Post by chpatrick »

alnwlsn wrote: post #21

The future: "and I want a 3mm hole in one side of the plate. No the other side. No, not like that, at the bottom. Now make it 10mm from the other hole. No the other hole. No, up not sideways. Wait, which way is up? Never mind, I'll do it myself." I'm having trouble understanding why you would want to do this. A good interface between what I want and the model I will make is to draw a picture, not write an essay. This…

If the napkin sketch generation is 95% right and only needs minor corrections then it's still a massive time saver.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#30

Post by ssl-3 »

alnwlsn wrote: post #21

The future: "and I want a 3mm hole in one side of the plate. No the other side. No, not like that, at the bottom. Now make it 10mm from the other hole. No the other hole. No, up not sideways. Wait, which way is up? Never mind, I'll do it myself." I'm having trouble understanding why you would want to do this. A good interface between what I want and the model I will make is to draw a picture, not write an essay. This…

So maybe the future is to draw a picture, and go from there?

For instance: My modelling abilities are limited. I can draw what I want, with measurements, but I am not a draftsman. I can also explain the concept, in conversational English, to a person who uses CAD regularly and they can hammer out a model in no time. This is a thing that I've done successfully in the past.

Could I just do it myself? Sure, eventually! But my modelling needs are very few and far between. It isn't something I need to do every day, or even every year. It would take me longer to learn the workflow and toolsets of [insert CAD system here] than to just earn some money doing something that I'm already good at and pay someone else to do the CAD work.

Except maybe in the future, perhaps I will be able use the bot to help bridge the gap between a napkin sketch of a widget and a digital model of that same widget. (Maybe like Scotty tried to do with the mouse in Star Trek IV.)

(And before anyone says it: I'm not really particularly interested in becoming proficient at CAD. I know I can learn it, but I just don't want to. It has never been my goal to become proficient at every trade under the sun and there are other skills that I'd rather focus on learning and maintaining instead. And that's OK -- there's lots of other things in life that I will probably also never seek to be proficient at, too.)

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