Hacker News: ponyous

New comment by ponyous in "Arena AI Model ELO History"

ponyous — Thu, 14 May 2026 08:24:15 +0000

Seems like Chinese labs are the only ones that are trustworthy (at least when it gets to this specific issue). This feels so ironic haha

New comment by ponyous in "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"

ponyous — Tue, 05 May 2026 08:11:26 +0000

The site is currently unavailable 503 so I can't read it. But I wonder, what should you consent to? Every dependency? Every dependency above 1GB?

New comment by ponyous in "Kimi K2.6 just beat Claude, GPT-5.5, and Gemini in a coding challenge"

ponyous — Sun, 03 May 2026 06:16:42 +0000

Kimi is nowhere near GPT or Opus unfortunately. I really wish it was. I’m running evals where models have to generate code that produces 3D models and it’s obvious that it lacks spatial understanding and makes many more code errors before it succeeds.

Maybe it’s better in one particular case here and there and I think this blog post is example of that.

New comment by ponyous in "Show HN: AI CAD Harness"

ponyous — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:13:40 +0000

Gregor! Not sure I want to say more on here.

New comment by ponyous in "Show HN: AI CAD Harness"

ponyous — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:41:21 +0000

Been following you guys a while, seems like you've been gaining some traction recently, lets goo and congrats!

I have been working on GrandpaCAD[0] for a while, a very similar product. I thought of you as my biggest competitors but noticed recently you are focusing more and more on professionals while I am focusing on total noobs in modeling who just want to whip out a quick model. So I guess we are not competitors anymore?

My evals[1] show that Opus 4.7 and GPT 5.5 are very comparable in terms of generation quality, but GPT 5.5 is slower and costs sooo much more in my harness. And the original breakthrough model was Gemini 3.1. I'm curious do you have more written about your benchmarks setup?

If you want to chat email is in my profile. Btw, just met "your"(?) neighbour on a plane a couple of days ago. World is small.

[0]: https://grandpacad.com

[1]: https://grandpacad.com/en/blog/public-benchmarks-misled-me-o...

New comment by ponyous in "CadQuery is an open-source Python library for building 3D CAD models"

ponyous — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 07:35:29 +0000

Another library I have to integrate and benchmark against OpenSCAD for my AI SaaS[0]. I am really curious how constructive solid geometry compares to sketching and extruding that CadQuery is build on.

Anyone curious in the writeup? I have a pretty good harness for evaluating 3d generation performance.

[0]: https://grandpacad.com

New comment by ponyous in "Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs"

ponyous — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:24:19 +0000

Why does M1 Max project significantly higher revenue than M3 Max with double the ram?

New comment by ponyous in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

ponyous — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:54:01 +0000

http://grandpacad.com - 3D Modeling tool intended for creating 3D prints. AI based. Allows for dimensionally accurate parts as well as organic shapes.

I massively improve it every month. Pretty proud of it.

New comment by ponyous in "X Randomly Banning Users for "Inauthentic Behavior""

ponyous — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:51:17 +0000

As far as I know reddit does the same thing. If you don’t follow normal human patterns you will quickly get banned. I read some guy’s report where he got banned 8 times detailing each behaviour and indeed it was nothing crazy.

New comment by ponyous in "Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)"

ponyous — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:29:14 +0000

I export it as .3mf file and display it with threejs on the web. Compilation seemed fast enough - few seconds tops.

New comment by ponyous in "Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)"

ponyous — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:34:53 +0000

Does this use its own backend/engine? I've been working on LLM to CAD tool[0] and have realised there are so many backends and options to choose from. Since the realisation I'm trying to find the best representation for an LLM. I think OpenSCAD is currently the best and most feature complete choice, but I definitely need to dig a bit deeper. If anyone has any pointers I welcome them!

[0]: https://GrandpaCAD.com

New comment by ponyous in "Claude Tips for 3D Work"

ponyous — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:47:13 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by ponyous in "Claude Tips for 3D Work"

ponyous — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:56:46 +0000

This "screenshot -> refine loop" is a great strategy and I have built it into my 3D Modeling product as well[0], but had to disable it because it would often quadruple the costs and the product is already expensive.

I am on standby to enable it though, just need a price to drop a bit more!

[0]: https://grandpacad.com

New comment by ponyous in "Shall I implement it? No"

ponyous — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 23:01:49 +0000

In the coworking I am in people are hitting limits on 60$ plan all the time. They are thinking about which models to use to be efficient, context to include etc…

I’m on claude code $100 plan and never worry about any of that stuff and I think I am using it much more than they use cursor.

Also, I prefer CC since I am terminal native.

New comment by ponyous in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"

ponyous — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 08:07:35 +0000

3D AI Modeling software intended for 3D printers.

https://grandpacad.com

Originally I made it for my grandpa, but I got a lot of interest so I made it into a full commercial product.

Just yesterday I published a set of 3 mini tutorials if you want to see how it works - https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKt1F5TvOjAHE07oBDlPXcrHc...

New comment by ponyous in "Gemini 3.1 Pro"

ponyous — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 11:23:52 +0000

Ran a bunch of 3D Modeling benchmarks on Gemini 3.1 vs Gemini 3.

Unsurprisingly 3.1 performs a bit better. But surprisingly it costs 2.6x as much ($0.14 vs. $0.37 per 3D Model Generation) and is 2.5x slower (1m 24s vs. 3m 28s).

To me it feels like "lets increase our thinking budget and call it an improved model!"

New comment by ponyous in "Gemini 3 Deep Think"

ponyous — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:22:36 +0000

I am building pretty much the same product as OP, and have a pretty good harness to test LLMs. In fact I have run a tons of tests already. It’s currently aimed for my own internal tests, but making something that is easier to digest should be a breeze. If you are curious: https://grandpacad.com/evals

New comment by ponyous in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)"

ponyous — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 23:15:45 +0000

https://grandpacad.com/

Dimensionally accurate AI 3D modelling. My grandpa has a 3D printer but struggles to use any complex tools. So I am working on this chat interface to allow him to do some simple models.

So far he has triggered more than 150 generations. It’s getting better every model cycle and gives me something I enjoy working on.

New comment by ponyous in "Speed up responses with fast mode"

ponyous — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 08:32:24 +0000

I see no mention of that, but OpenAI already has "service tier" API option[0] that improves the speed of a request by about 40% according to my tests.

[0]: https://openai.com/api-priority-processing/

New comment by ponyous in "GPT-5.3-Codex"

ponyous — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 18:57:03 +0000

I think models are smart enough for most of the stuff, these little incremental changes barely matter now. What I want is the model that is fast.