Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Physics-based CAD

prandtl.design

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 28 posts

Re: Show HN: Physics-based CAD

#4

Post by oneel »

lochieferrier wrote: post #3
sheer_horror wrote: post #2

I managed to break the tool by inputting some infeasible inputs and then changing them again several times, and then refreshing the page.

This is my first time putting something up, everything is breaking, fixing it now.

No test like a production test.

Re: Show HN: Physics-based CAD

#9

Post by lochieferrier »

frik wrote: post #7

It's called parametric modelling, and many CAD software use a parametric kernel (solver). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-aided_design Is this somehow different? Please explain

The difference is that there is a simple physics model that's driving the dimensions. So the arms are getting resized according to beam bending, the battery is a certain size for the energy requirement, motors are sized by kw/kg and kw/m^3 and so on.

There's definitely ways to make this sort of model in something like Solidworks through the use of a variables interface that interacts with the drawing dimensions. Though it can't do any sort of fast optimization with the physics relations. What's happening here is a guaranteed global optimal design is being returned for a given set of inputs and objectives in a few seconds.

Re: Show HN: Physics-based CAD

#10

Post by lochieferrier »

bnegreve wrote: post #6

Cool, I think more applications should be using solvers like this. What solver are you using? Is it solved server side?

Currently solved server side, though assembled on the client side (see console) with gpkitjs and then passed through to GPkit.

Packages here: https://github.com/lochieferrier/gpkitjs and here: https://github.com/hoburg/gpkit

Geometric programs are super cool.

Post reply on HN