Comment by mwill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mwill | Hacker News Reader

I see multiple comments arguing that using a CAD package is only easier and faster if you already know how to use a CAD package, and this is a 'better' UI for people who don't have those skills....but in that scenario, are you not then just trading the fixed upfront time investment to learn the basics of CAD, for ongoing inefficiency and difficulty every time you want to model something?

For a user of a UI like this, there comes a point where their time would have been better spent learning a CAD package.

Another layer is if you are modelling something that has to be machined or built in real life, you have to be keeping an eye on how it will physically exist throughout the entire process, stock it will be machined from or materials it will be built with. Thinking in terms of CAD workflows help with this greatly in my experience. The operations shown in the demo are not only easier to perform in a CAD package than describe in English to an LLM, but also the easiest part of it (except maybe if you are designing strictly for 3D printing)

> For a user of a UI like this, there comes a point where their time would have been better spent learning a CAD package.

for some users, they will think of few enough designs in a lifetime to make learning any specific software worthwhile. For these users, the LLM's inefficiencies are worth the trade-off.

But the thing is, those users are unlikely to have thought of anything novel simply because they are not designers: if the tool is going to be successful then what they want is likely to be in the training set and easily googleable.

This whole idea seems contingent on imagining a situation where a non-CAD user has an idea for a truly novel physical object, has extensive geometry skills, and can describe that object in some magical level of detail that doesn't involve any terms of art from the CAD domain.

It's not a very likely scenario. And the energy put into tools to support this scenario would be better spent improving searchability of the data that is going to go into the training set, and simple tools to allow objects in the training set to be combined (such as those offered by TinkerCad or Microsoft's 3D builder).

It's also prone to the risk that the LLM gets something wrong: makes a part that is prone to failure, or will actually destroy a CNC, or be unprintable by a 3D printer, etc.

  > It's also prone to the risk that the LLM gets something wrong: makes a part that is prone to failure, or will actually destroy a CNC, or be unprintable by a 3D printer, etc.

You can destroy 3d printers too... especially if you get the bright idea of generating gcode... and one might reasonably get this idea since so many factors matter like the settings (but can easily result in things like ASA poisoning...)

It's a real "too clever by a quarter" thinking

These users can download plenty of designs for the objects they think of - you don't often create truly unique things, most stuff already exists.

More importantly, creating a 3D model without understanding mechanical properties is a meaningless exercise. Go ahead, ask anybody who has built things about their first attempts - and this approach means they will always be first attempts.

But this is just so dismissive of the whole profession(s)

It's like saying I only want 2 sculptures on my garden so we should make a thing that sculpts like Michelangelo because I don't want to learn to sculpt for only two statues.

This is why we have civilization, trade. We can each specialize, master, one thing, then share our surplus for others'.

Why wouldn't you hire someone who can do it on an hour?

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