Suzanne: AI tool for designing and manufacturing physical products
suzanne3d.com
suzanne3d.com
One thing AI does well is allow businesses a much longer delay before realizing that designers’ real value is figuring out what things should look like to solve specific business problems. To CEOs/founders/presidents: The logo isn’t for you— it’s for your customers. Your personal taste and preconceptions should have no part in the process. Anybody with a few years in Illustrator could make any asset you needed. Just because you can make a neato looking logo with your chatbot of choice, doesn’t mean it’s an appropriate logo, and there are people who work for a pretty modest salary that can explain exactly why.
Our node to fellow 3D nerds, iykyk
Claude has helped me with brainstorming, but I do all the CAD and optimization.
Would be cool if, in 10 years, the prompt to prototype pipeline was as simple, quick, and effective as this landing page alludes to.
1. A frontier model wrapper that gens the designs 2. A bunch of humans behind the scenes ("AI means Another Indian") actually reviewing and fixing the design.
That is, get to market quickly with people, gather lots of data, and hope that models can be refined eventually so less/no human review is needed.
I recently worked with Claude Opus 5 High to help me build a testing rig for some acoustic tests. There was a lot of back and forth with each time Claude giving me the stereotypical "Great catch! I see my mistake in the previous iteration..." responses.
>>"Make this enclosure lighter while keeping it strong.
Optimized the geometry while maintaining structural requirements. 31% lighter Structure verified"
Are we supposed to believe the AI just intuitively knows how strong is strong enough for the hypothetical enclosure? Engineering is about designing against actual constraints, and often those constraints are the actual hard part. For example, determining how strong an enclosure is is very easy, analysis tools in CAD/Cam software have had that for years and calculating yield is a 1st or 2nd year undergrad problem. The actual hard part is knowing how strong is strong enough. Rarely, if ever, are actual limits given in hard units. The engineer needs to determine how strong the enclosure needs to be to survive the intended use, and balance that with cost. But those design limits normally aren't given as "this needs to withstand this many kPa of point load", determining what that load is is often the hard part. There seems to be a lot of hand waving going on with this marketing copy and absolutely no details, only a 'book a demo' link.
I'd also be very, very skeptical of how useful and modifiable the design files produced are. It's really easy to crap out a design in parametric CAD that is un-modifiable. Sketches can be done poorly or the model can be structured badly, so it becomes hard to edit later. I notice that their example files are all 3d meshes and not proper design files. If I'm making a physical product, having just a STL file doesn't help me much if I need to actually modify 'my' design. Am I to believe they can actually export a Solidworks file? I'm skeptical.
While in theory it's a cool idea, this marketing copy amakes me think this is a vibe-coded project by a team with very little real-world experience. They are likely going to struggle landing any real customers, since their sales team won't be able to answer the questions a serious customer is going to ask. However, they will probably book some demos from people who have a idea of a product but no real road map. As someone who has done software consulting adjacent to this space (focusing on small manufacturers and design houses that would be their customers), the type of customers that will book a demo off of this page are also the type of customers you don't want to have.
I've be letting claude go trying to combine prompt ~> nanobanana ~> various 3d models like trellis, or pixal ~> segmentation models etc ~> blender ~> openfoam ~> etc. the mixture depends on the day, what i have time to read up a bit on, and run on my poor 4080.
Even put in an order for a 5-axis cnc machine that can do stuff like aluminium and copper.
Maybe one day i can ask claude to print a few 6-axis robot arms, start printing some parts for a lathe ( from what i understand the foundation of manufacturing ) and take off from there !
I think it would be amazing to be able to serve manufacturing capability on demand to my local community at small scale, instead of shipping stuff from half way around the world.
They are not 3d printed and can not be unless you making weird one piece frames.
Anyhow until they switch from solid modelling geometry to CAD I won’t take them seriously and no one else should either.
They are definitely in the fake it to you make it stage and have yet figured out how the real world of consumer products actually are made.
This is just another ThreeJS + LLM with the standard ThreeJS built in exporters.
thinking of the 3d glasses in movies, even the ancient cardboard red/blue ones
I wasn't able to find anything about output files in their FAQ, and making a part in the AI builder didn't give me any answers unless I wanted to go all the way through ordering.
horrible
Imagine being able to prompt out products in the future, and making this available to kids in every school, just like how a lot of schools make 3D printers with Template Models available to print out and combine or lego kits.
This is AMAZING, im not saying these founders might succeed in envisioning that future, but this industry has been assembling all the instruments to speed up the iteration feedback loop as much as possible since last few years :: All the more and more advanced All in One CAD machines for homes, like
- Bambulabs Laser Engraving + 3D Printer combo (with more advanced materials now, Car Workshops are literally 3dprinting super sturdy car parts with the latest bambulabs filaments [0])
- Home CNC machines like Carvera : https://youtu.be/7Zs1ZtcPRHY?si=eDvZ4bhlySQqDUbE
- UV Printers like Eufy : https://youtu.be/3IBMjZDMdcc?si=lZfKVsSqutT1KyUu
- Auto Probing tools for giving AI oscilloscope and pin readouts automatically :: https://github.com/gainsec/autoprober
- Embedded Systems tools like https://www.axiometa.io , Claude Code integrations for Espressif/Atmega/STM boards , trying to make the embedded systems layer easier
This is just yet another glimpse into where this industry is going, This is the perfect sorta post for HN and People who aspire to Build Startups and Join YC Batch.
And exactly why this is way better than any producthunt out there. I dont think this sorta negativity is necessary. If anything HN has recently been getting too many naysayers, pessimistic folks, compared to the imaginative, techno optimist folks from before.
So bullish on the future of this space :)
Saw the launch video now,
May God bless You and Yehor both.
Going from bits to atoms is _hard_ for a ton of reasons, and their example prompt "Prepare this for manufacturing" is a huge red flag IMO. That said, I wish them luck, we need fresh blood in this slow moving industry.
For background I've been into 3d printing since 2013, my first printer was an acrylic i3 clone with a RAMPS controller running Marlin. I've built 3 printers over the years and use my current one pretty regularly. I've been a 3d printing evangelist for years.
That said, going to any sort of craft fair or places like Etsy, and low effort 3d printed garbage is really getting annoying. I was at my small, local renfaire earlier this summer and 1/4 of the booths were just selling 3d printed and laser cut stuff, most of which were designs that are easily found online. I've seen this kind of stuff taking over at other similar spaces, and have seen people complaining about it for a year or so. It would maybe not be so much of a problem if people were making their own designs, but when it's just a model off of printables with at best some minor tweaks made by an AI tool, I have trouble getting excited.
For reference, of the 10 vendors I actually talked to who were selling these kinds of things, none had made any models themselves or were even familiar with blender, tinkercad, or any other modeling tools. There were 3d printed 'ale steins' that had had text embossed onto them, or plywood tchotkes with AI art lasered onto them. Annoying, since anyone who has done even a basic Google search should be well aware that 3d printing, especially FDM, is a terrible process for something like a drinking glass, that will be bacteria heaven and impossible to properly clean without very specific post-processing.
So while I can't say this is why the parent poster was annoyed, this is one of the reasons someone would be annoyed with 3d printing. If I'm browsing at a renfaire, I'm looking for a handmade thing to add to my costume or home decor. The last thing I want to see in that type of environment is a Ai-generated image of a dragon burned onto a cheap set of bamboo coasters bought off of alibaba. I've seen videos and posts onli3of people expressing similar annoyances, but the have been crafting, sewing, and similar creators so probably outside the general HN zeitgeist.
>>"I see zero reason in the slightest to ever put a product of it in front of someone else"
That is many people's problem with it. It's super easy to set up the physical equivalent of AI slop at a craft fair. I'm not wanting to delve into it, but given the rise of vendors I wouldn't be surprised if selling 3d printed and laser cut stuff is the new meta being pushed by the same types of people who sell 'make money online' courses. Think the same type of worthless courses that a few years ago would be pitching dropshipping courses. Per my other comment, 3d printed beer steins. Anyone with any 3d printing experience should know that's a bad idea, but I saw multiple for sale.
And as far as Amazon, it's already started: https://www.amazon.com/3Dgenius-Printed-Impossible-Passthrou...
Amazon is less infested, since they require you to print and ship up front for FBA, but it's still there. That was the 1st result for "3d fidget cone". Looks like they are selling at least some, although no clue how profitable it actually is. Amazon search is awful, but having to parse through garbage like this certainly doesn't help.
sendcutsend can do it as well, reasonably so. but you don't get the file. you have to buy the part from them, and they still own the file, you'll never get it for yourself.
For example, ford has a square hole in some dashboards and someone made and sold a 3-d printed phone holder that perfectly fit into the hole.
I've seen tool trays that give you a place for all tools in a kit. This stuff used to be the territory of airplane mechanics who had to shadow their tools by regulation.