Comment by knicholes
So there's OpenSCAD, which is basically programming the geometry parametrically. But... I'd liken it to generating an SVG of a pelican on a bicycle at the current levels of LLMs.
So there's OpenSCAD, which is basically programming the geometry parametrically. But... I'd liken it to generating an SVG of a pelican on a bicycle at the current levels of LLMs.
Will echo sibling. I have tried using Claude Sonnet for OpenSCAD to design a simple soap mold and it failed terribly in getting the rounded shape I wanted. (1) It's really difficult to explain 3d figures in text, and I doubt there is a lot of training material out there. (2) OpenSCAD is limited in what it can do. So the combination is pretty bad.
I needed some gears generated recently, and figured I could just get it done with Claude or Chatgpt in OpenSCAD in a few minutes... but oh man was I wrong. I was so wrong.
Wasted half an hour generating absolute nonsense if it even compiled and ended up going with one of those svg gear generators instead lmao.
You'd probably have been better off giving it a basic summary of OpenSCAD grammar and asking for a C or Python program to emit the code.
I designed some parts for an enclosure over the weekend using claude opus to generate an OpenSCAD file, which I then exported to STL and sent to a 3D printer. I was able to get a visually-correct-enough STL off to the 3D printer in about 5 minutes.
I then waited about an hour for the print to finish, only to discover I wanted to make some adjustments. While I was able to iterate a couple times, I quickly realized that there were certain structures that were difficult to describe precisely enough without serious time spent on wording and deciding what to specify. It got harder as the complexity of the object grew, since one constraint affects another.
In the end, I switched to FreeCAD and did it by hand.