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.
This is kind of the physical equivalent of having the model spit out an entire app, though. When you dig into the code, a lot of it won't make sense, you'll have meat and gravy variables that aren't doing anything, and the app won't work without someone who knows what they're doing going in and fixing it. LLMs are actually surprisingly good at at codeCAD given that they're not trained on the task of producing 3d parts, so there's probably a lot of room for improvement.
I think it's correct that new workflows will need to be developed, but I also think that codeCAD in general is probably the future. You get better scalability (share libraries for making parts, rather than the data), better version control, more explicit numerical optimization, and the tooling can be split up (i.e. when programming, you can use a full-blown IDE, or you can use a text editor and multiple individual tools to achieve the same effect). The workflow issue, at least to me, is common to all applications of LLMs, and something that will be solved out of necessity. In fact, I suspect that improving workflows by adding multiple input modes will improve model performance on all tasks.
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.