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Teaching LLMs how to solid model

willpatrick.xyz

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Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#41

Post by dgacmu »

spmcl wrote: post #13

I did this a few months ago to make a Christmas ornament. There are some rough edges with the process, but for hobby 3D printing, current LLMs with OpenSCAD is a game-changer. I hadn't touched my 3D printer for years until this project. https://seanmcloughl.in/3d-modeling-with-llms-as-a-cad-luddi...

This matches my experience having Claude 3.5 and Gemini 2.0-flash generate openSCAD, but I would call it interesting instead of a game changer.

It gets pretty confused about the rotation of some things and generally needs manual fixing. But it kind of gets the big picture sort of right. It mmmmayybe saved me time the last time I used it but I'm not sure. Fun experiment though.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#42

Post by seveibar »

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…

Most likely you won’t be asking for specific things like “3mm hole 3in from the side”, you’ll say things like “Create a plastic enclosure sized to go under a desk, ok add a usb receptacle opening, ok add flanges with standard screw holes”

In the text to CAD ecosystem we talk about matching our language/framework to “design intent” a lot. The ideal interface is usually higher level than people expect it to be.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#43

Post by ariwilson »

I'm a great user for this problem as I just got a 3D printer and I'm no good at modeling. I'm doing tutorials and printing a few things with TinkerCAD now, but my historic visualization sense is not great. I used SketchUp when I had a working Oculus Quest which was very cool but not sure how practical it is.

Unfortunately I tried to generate OpenSCAD a few times to make more complex things and it hasn't been a great experience. I just tried o3 with the prompt "create a cool case for a Pixel 6 Pro in openscad" and, even after a few attempts at fixing, still had a bunch of non-working parts with e.g. the USB-C port in the wrong place, missing or incorrect speaker holes, a design motif for the case not connected to the case, etc.

It reminds me of ChatGPT in late 2022 when it could generate code that worked for simple cases but anything mildly subtle it would randomly mess up. Maybe someone needs to finetune one of the more advanced models on some data / screenshots from Thingiverse or MakerWorld?

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#44

Post by switchbak »

alexose wrote: post #17

As a huge OpenSCAD fan and everyday Cursor user, it seems obvious to me that there's a huge opportunity _if_ we can improve the baseline OpenSCAD code quality. If the model could plan ahead well, set up good functions, pull from standard libraries, etc., it would be instantly better than most humans. If it had a sense of real-world applications, physics, etc., well, it would be superhuman. Is anyone working on this r…

OpenSCAD has some fundamental issues with which folks are well aware. Build123d is a Python alternative that shows promise and seems more capable, and there's others around.

Hard to beat the mindshare of OpenSCAD at the moment though.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#45

Post by phkahler »

eurekin wrote: post #38
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…

I have come across a significant number of non engineers wanting to do, what ultimately involves some basic CAD modelling. Some can stall on such tasks for years (home renovation) or just don't do it at all. After some brief research, the main cause is not wanting to sink over 30 hours into learning basics of a cad package of choice. For some reason they imagine it as a daunting, complicated, impenetrable task with m…

>> I have come across a significant number of non engineers wanting to do, what ultimately involves some basic CAD modelling.

I very much want Solvespace to be the tool for those people. It's very easy to learn and do the basics. But some of the bugs still need to get fixed (failures tend to be big problems for new users because without experience its hard to explain what's going wrong or a workaround) and we need a darn chamfer and fillet tool.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#46

Post by bboygravity »

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…

Text (specs + conversations) is the starting point of 100 percent of all CAD drawings made by more than 1 human though (so essentially everything you see around you).

I don't get your point (and yes I use CAD programs myself).

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#47

Post by alnwlsn »

bboygravity wrote: post #46
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…

Text (specs + conversations) is the starting point of 100 percent of all CAD drawings made by more than 1 human though (so essentially everything you see around you). I don't get your point (and yes I use CAD programs myself).

Most of the things I work on are "make this fit onto that like this". There's not that much information contained in that sentence, it's contained in the 2 objects I was just handed. Sometimes we have drawings for that stuff, most of the time we don't. The "like this" part can be a conversation, but the rest of the info is missing and needs to be recreated.

I said this below, but most of the mechanical people I've met are good at talking with their hands. "take this thing like this, turn it like that, mount it like this, drill a hole here, look down there" and so on. We still don't have a good analog for this in computers. VR is the closest we have and it's still leagues behind the Human Hand mk. 1. Video is good too, but you have to put in a bit more attention to camerawork and lighting than taking a selfie.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#48

Post by whatshisface »

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…

Here's how it might work, by analogy to the workflow for image generation:

"An aerodynamically curved plastic enclosure for a form-over-function guitar amp."

Then you get something with the basic shapes and bevels in place, and adjust it in CAD to fit your actual design goals. Then,

"Given this shape, make it easy to injection mold."

Then it would smooth out some things a little too much, and you'd fix it in CAD. Then, finally,

"Making only very small changes and no changes at all to the surfaces I've marked as mounting-related in CAD, unify my additions visually with the overall design of the curved shell."

Then you'd have to fix a couple other things, and you'd be finished.

Re: Teaching LLMs how to solid model

#50

Post by tylergetsay »

whatshisface wrote: post #48
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…

Here's how it might work, by analogy to the workflow for image generation: "An aerodynamically curved plastic enclosure for a form-over-function guitar amp." Then you get something with the basic shapes and bevels in place, and adjust it in CAD to fit your actual design goals. Then, "Given this shape, make it easy to injection mold." Then it would smooth out some things a little too much, and you'd fix it in CAD. The…

In your example, what about mounting the electronics or specifying that the control knobs need to fit within these dimensions? I guess its easy if those objects are available as a model, but thats not always the case.. 3d scanner maybe?
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