Cool that you licensed it with GPL, what was your thinking on the license?
Honestly I would've liked to MIT. It's mainly that the openscad wasm we use is GPL
Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
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Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#52Is CADAM also what's used for the commercial product adam.new? How did you manage to write all those plugins? If it is also CADAM isn't stuff getting lost in the Fusion/Solidworks/Onshape -> OpenSCAD -> back process? Do constraints and everything just seamlessly import/export?
Some comments here mention tolerances/functional requirements. Do you think the LLM/screenshot loop will scale to that too? Maybe rendering subassemblies individually until they make sense? Still feels like a full functioning V8 engine block needs _a lot_ of ghost-view screenshots to verify it works. What's your thoughts on a "simulation" approach, since it's not aligned with your bitter-lesson-blog-post?
Are you able to reveal more about what kind of traction you have? 10s/100s/1000s of companies?
Very cool open source project, and thanks for sharing so much!
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#53Cool that you licensed it with GPL, what was your thinking on the license?
Honestly I would've liked to MIT. It's mainly that the openscad wasm we use is GPL
Makes sense, I keep hoping some startup will be able to crack the open licensing without limiting their business problem. Would love it if we could do a bit better than the rugpulling dynamics that are kind of common now without just giving AWS a buffet of startups to hurt.
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#54why is text the setup, rather than sketches? pictures? ive found a process by which the llm gives me a picture, then i draw on it and hand it back works fairly well
take a look at modelrift.com, it is built around annotating built models by basic pen and arrow tools, works fairly well ('smarter' model is significantly better)
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#55https://modelrift.com/blog/openscad-llm-benchmark/ LLMs are still weak at spatial reasoning, but it gets better. Check out modelrift.com for another alternative
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#56Is CADAM also what's used for the commercial product adam.new? How did you manage to write all those plugins? If it is also CADAM isn't stuff getting lost in the Fusion/Solidworks/Onshape -> OpenSCAD -> back process? Do constraints and everything just seamlessly import/export? Some comments here mention tolerances/functional requirements. Do you think the LLM/screenshot loop will scale to that too? Maybe rendering su…
The same principles of an agent writing cad as code and then visualing inspecting the output in a loop runs through all our products. Whilst CADAM uses OpenSCAD, Fusion uses Python, Onshape use FeatureScript etc..
The majority of our enterprise traction is on our flagship product: https://adam.new/
Here you can connect to your engineering software and use AI to generate:
- CAD - Renderings - Slides for design review - BOM
and much more!
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#57"I need an engine mount for 1999 toyota land cruiser j90 for the 1kz-te engine with a manual gearbox. Can you generate me a cad to send to a company in China to 3d print it?" "Done — I've created a heavy-duty, fully parametric engine mount bracket that fits a typical four-bolt block pattern and a single-stud chassis isolator with an alignment pin, much like what the 1KZ-TE requires." I dont think it's even close :( P…
There's already a lack of information online for simple things like torque specs. I can't imagine that a skilled professional could design the engine mounts even with if they had all of the relevant context online. As far as I know, the way that these reproduction hardware companies operate is that they have physical cars that they can design around. I have a 1993 Subaru WRX and I needed to replace the coolant header…
If they AI would respond with what you just wrote, instead of "Done..." the world would be trending in a good direction.
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#58What exactly is the use case for this? Just making pretty little 3d models?
There are so many reasons why I, as an engineer, will never even attempt to use AI for mechanical design, that trying to list them all is about to give me an autistic screeching fit.
Even if all I need is a simple little bracket or something, I can model that and know it's right much quicker than I can ask the AI to do it and then check it's work. There is no time savings here.
Heck, for any of the stuff I need that is simple enough to plausibly ask AI to draw, I don't even bother to model in the first place, I would either sketch it with a pencil or just make the piece right off the top of my head.
If it's more complicated than that, then my approach grows to include things like what stock I have available, what tooling, fixturing and machines are present, whether I can use any COTS hardware to simplify the design, the tolerancing scheme I want to use...and my output needs to include not just the model, but toleranced drawings and any other assemblies and such that are required.
And besides all of that, and with love....OpenSCAD is a joke, and if you seriously try to tell me that "the best paradigm for CAD generation is to generate CAD as code", I cannot take you seriously.
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#59What exactly is the use case for this? Just making pretty little 3d models? There are so many reasons why I, as an engineer, will never even attempt to use AI for mechanical design, that trying to list them all is about to give me an autistic screeching fit. Even if all I need is a simple little bracket or something, I can model that and know it's right much quicker than I can ask the AI to do it and then check it's…
I agree openSCAD isn't anywhere near powerful enough for professional workflows. Hence why I framed this as AI TinkerCAD.
However, you can drive any professional CAD software though code. As we drive Autodesk Fusion via python through agents.
Re: Launch HN: Adam (YC W25) – Open-Source AI CAD
#60What exactly is the use case for this? Just making pretty little 3d models? There are so many reasons why I, as an engineer, will never even attempt to use AI for mechanical design, that trying to list them all is about to give me an autistic screeching fit. Even if all I need is a simple little bracket or something, I can model that and know it's right much quicker than I can ask the AI to do it and then check it's…
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