Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48752604

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

Used about 200k tokens in 30 minutes. You can view the generated implicit model here: https://www.cad.fun/?file=implicits%2Fpelican-bicycle.implic...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48512031

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48475252

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48379878

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

This is: 1. A small library of SDFs with a browser-native renderer: https://github.com/earthtojake/implicit.js 2. A demo that renders 3D models from code in realtime: https://www.implicit.sh/ 3. A set of skills to write code to generate 3D models with agents: https://github.com/earthtojake/text-to-cad

Some awesome things about implicit CAD: • No CAD kernels (Parasolid, OpenCascade, etc.): the math + code is the model. • They are FAST: the https://www.implicit.sh/ demo compiles and renders models from GLSL in the browser in realtime. • Representations are small: implicit code can be 100x smaller than STEP files.

Implicits are great at: • Manipulating complex geometry • Producing high resolution, scaled CAD models • Boolean / offset operations

But they are really hard for humans to intuit, which is why we prefer vanilla CAD that works more like LEGO: faces, edges, holes, cuts, fillets, etc., with human-readable topology.

Agents, on the other hand, are very, very good at coding and math — the two key ingredients for implicits.

The third ingredient is visual / spatial reasoning. While lacking today, I believe for many reasons (including robotics) this will be the next frontier that labs pursue.

To caveat: agents aren’t great at implicits today. Frontier models are still pretty blind, so implicits break down on complex parts/assemblies with visual feedback (code → model → screenshot → repeat). There is also no easy toolchain to inspect implicits because they lack topology.

That said, 6 months ago the models couldn’t write reliable code. Things are changing fast, and I think 2026 will be the year the models solve 3D design.

I also think it’s possible (and even probable) that implicit CAD becomes the preferred way for models to do 3D design.

Special thanks to Blake Courter and the Gradient Control team for teaching me about implicits and sharing the Python primitives used to build this library. Blake is the GOAT of implicit CAD and gave an excellent talk on this exact topic at Kinetic a few weeks ago.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363473

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48228497

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161733

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

Many CAD tools like Autodesk have huge closed libraries of standard mechanical and electrical parts.

The goal is to build an equivalent catalog for the open source CAD community (that’s easy for humans and agents to use).

The directory is seeded from dozens of existing open source catalogs and generators, catalogued and organised by family, standard, size, etc.

The directory also includes an API, llms.txt and skill to make it easy for agents to download relevant STEP files in generative CAD tools. I’ve added the skill to my text-to-cad repository:

https://www.cadskills.xyz

I’m hoping many can contribute to the repo and expand the directory to hundreds of thousands of standard parts!

Happy building

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48129389

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

I actually used GPT 5.5 Pro to generate the prompts from simpler one sentence prompts, so hypothetically it’s just an extra step in the harness for an agent to unpack / add detail to a prompt based on the user’s goal.

I'm brushing up on robotics after spending the last 10 years working in software land. After being humbled by modern CAD tools like Onshape, I built this harness / skill to help me generate some basic CAD models for a 7dof robot arm I'm designing.

It ended up working much better than I expected, particularly on the latest GPT 5.5 and Opus 4.7 models. It's been a lot of fun to work on. I've learned a lot about how STEP files work (opencascade, breps, etc) as well as 3d rendering tools like threejs.

I don't have much intention of turning this into a business, it's really just a fun open source tool that I'll continue to maintain as long as myself and others find it useful. Very open to ideas and contributions.

P.S. I just pushed a major update that improves the workflow and scripts/tools for the CAD skill. I also added some basic benchmarks to start measuring performance over time.

There's also a bunch of work going into the SKILL.md to plan for more complex parts (this is mostly a stop gap while the models don't have amazing spatial reasoning).