As an aside, I'm frustrated for the same reason regarding induction cooktops. European units are a fraction of the cost of their American equivalents.

The value is not in creating models of new/custom parts, but in quickly generating models of standard parts such as pipe fittings, bolts, connectors, and stuff you could buy from a catalog. Prompts like "m4 cap screw which is 50 mm long" or "2 inch ASME B16.5 pipe flange" seem to reliably generate adequate results. Design of large assemblies often requires locating or drawing dozens (or hundreds) of such models (though there are sometimes libraries available). It's almost like the model was trained on the entire McMaster-Carr catalog! (maybe they scraped it?) The models will still need to be checked to ensure quality, but this is true regardless of whether a human or AI creates them.

Modeling even simple fixtures and brackets with a system like this is cumbersome: I tried, but requires paragraphs of metes-and-bounds language. Nevertheless I got the parts I wanted. Much of engineering happens at the interfaces, so accurately describing things like hole patterns and mating surfaces is critical. This can certainly be done in text, just not time-efficiently.

Additionally, the output (STEP files, etc) are what we call in the business "dumb solids." They don't include any parametric logic, and the sorts of edits which can be made to them are limited and often require serious creativity.

Another drawback: this thing is slow! A good CAD user could draw a lot of these parts in less wall-clock time. I assume this can be overcome by throwing more iron at the problem.

The UI/UX is has a ton of rough edges (and I'm still not sure if I made an account or not) but is totally fine for a proof-of-concept.

I went into this with incredibly low hopes: I've heard many promises of software which promises to make CAD faster and easier and accessible to non-experts. These look great in sales pitches, but the engineers and designers in the audience invariably wince (or worse). This is something that I could actually use and would make my life easier.

Wirecutter wants to tell me what is the "best" when I really want to know what is the cheapest product that will satisfice my needs.