[incorene2]

What 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.

[alnwlsn]

The most difficult thing about these projects is for me to consider why anyone would want to use words to describe a 3D object. How do you reference objects? Saying "Make the hole at the end of the bracket 3 mm and move it up" isn't going to cut it. How do you know which end of the bracket I mean, and which direction does up refer to? So then I'd have to be more precise in what I'm asking for, and structure my words carefully in order to....

In 3D CAD, you click on it. It's completely unambiguous and it also doesn't take 10 seconds to interpret your prompt (because I saw this tool can also read images, but takes time to do so).

[edoceo]

Hi. I'm an idiot and I don't understand anything about CAD or 3D modeling. But! I want to build a machine I've dreamed up. It's got many parts, it's big? 2x1x2m. The current method is to talk to Blender experts and have them make mocks to see the draft running. Them pick some parts, properly model them (CAD), print them, test in real world. Loop.

I would love a text to Blender Animation to Things to Print then things to machine (CNC).

[imtringued]

I wouldn't. I'd rather draw a sketch or image of what I want and hand that over to the AI. There is no universe where I'd want to describe a CAD model as a text prompt (no, Patrick, OpenSCAD source files are not prompts, mayonnaise is not an instrument either).

[zachdive]

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.

[taneq]

> 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.

For me, this is the issue with all the AI stuff. The real work in what I do is figuring out what I want (requirements, constraints, design aesthetics etc.) and once that’s done, the rest is easy.

Even for things like voice commands, I’d much rather use a computer than talk to it.

[munksbeer]

I remember thinking like this about software development several years ago.

"AI will never be able to reason and write code as well as a human".

I was terribly wrong. I assume you will end up being wrong about engineering too.

[echoangle]

This doesn’t seem to be for machining CAD but more like stuff you would 3D print at home

[alnwlsn]

The stuff I 3D print at home uses machining CAD.

Making video game assets on the other hand I could see.

[zachdive]

yep