Cartesian – AI 3D Modeling for Design

eeustoria about 2 hours ago 44 commentsRead Article on formas.ai

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Discussion Sentiment

65% Positive

Analyzed from 1276 words in the discussion.

Discussion (44 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

throwitaway222•about 2 hours ago

I've been using Astra to just create things in Blender. It's great.

Kill the scroll jacking. It's a sign you're on Windows.

jrflo•about 1 hour ago

CAD is a different beast than mesh modeling. For product design you need a parametric model that can have precise dimensions and is constructed mathematically step by step. Mesh modeling is just moving a pile of triangles around in a very imprecise way. Works fine for 3D printing or digital assets, but if you want something that can be manufactured that's not good enough. And there isn't a good way to go from STL -> Parametric CAD so there's still room for a product here.

buildsjets•5 minutes ago

CATIA has had mesh import with canonical feature detection, and automatic replacement with parametric part features, for at least 25 years. It's in the "Quick Surface Reconstruction" and "Basic Surface Recognition" tools. They even work sometimes.

https://3dswym.3dexperience.3ds.com/wiki/catia-user-communit...

https://resources.rand3d.com/insights-from-within/scanned-da...

Unfortunately the P3 license costs like $15k per year, and it is f'in ugly clunky software.

ttul•24 minutes ago

It's just a matter of time. Astra was trained on a new 3D modelling dataset. They will surely train it on CAD apps (if they have not already done so). I don't hold out much hope for competitors hoping to get in front of that train.

yakz•21 minutes ago

Astra can use build123d, too. You'll get a STEP out of that.

jrflo•19 minutes ago

I've tried Sol on build123d and it was completely unusable, I should take another stab with Astra though.

ur-whale•about 1 hour ago

> there isn't a good way to go from STL -> Parametric CAD

yet.

as a matter of fact, you should try what AI can do on that problem, you'd be surprised.

jrflo•24 minutes ago

I have tried, I really wish it would be better because CAD is a slog and I want it to be automated. It's pretty bad at real world tasks.

lukeinator42•18 minutes ago

I've had decent success getting Claude Opus to design models using the python cadquery library, and then I can import the step file to fusion 360 to make any changes I want afterwards.

s-macke•about 1 hour ago

Exactly. I just give Astra an image such as furniture, and it creates an 3D reproduction in Blender. You don’t even need computer use. Codex and Blender’s scripting engine is enough.

tayo42•18 minutes ago

Can you do this with the 20 dollar plan?

s-macke•9 minutes ago

I have an example here. Took 3 hours with Pro Plan.

https://simulationcorner.net/chair/chair-evolution.gif

raincole•15 minutes ago

Yes, but it eats your 5-hour quota really quick.

idid•about 1 hour ago

I love to see more of these tools build on rhino's kernel. Arguably the best modelling (parametric, manual, or SDK) ergonomics when it comes to, from my experience, early stage aec workflows. A similar tool launched recently [0] that i found interesting. I'm also biased as it's my first and only true love when it comes to "coding things" for the built environment.

My take was that designing buildings was always the cheap part, and not core to what moves the needle in AEC (architecture, engineering, construction)

[0] https://illoca.com/ , not affiliated

IChooseY0u•about 1 hour ago

Looking at a bunch of these: I don't think they are even manufacturable. This is something you would use in a video game.

FLeXMurphy•about 1 hour ago

You are right to push back on that.

ur-whale•about 1 hour ago

> This is something you would use in a video game.

You say it like it's a bad thing.

raincole•19 minutes ago

It is when the tool's tagline is literally:

> an AI 3D modeling tool for architecture and product design.

jdiff•41 minutes ago

They're saying it as if it were contrary to what's being claimed. The tagline says "for architecture and product design." The supported file formats are not video game formats.

atonse•about 1 hour ago

I'm so excited about this sort of stuff. ForgeCAD [1] for me was the first mind-blowing application of this a few months ago, where I'm able to just have claude (or codex) write JS that creates 3D Models that I can then print in my 3D printer.

- Built a ring for my compost bin that can properly hold down the plastic bag. This was originally a multi week project because I was also learning Fusion 360 in small 2 hour chunks over many weekends, then with ForgeCAD I had a good prototype in 60 mins with multiple iterations.

- I also built a cover for my overheating Logitech Circle doorbell, snapped a photo, gave it to claude, and claude found all the dimensions on Logitech's website, and then we iterated with 3-4 prints until we had it just right.

This is a whole new set of workflows that are unleashed with agents, even for hobbyists.

1: https://forgecad.io

kemuri•14 minutes ago

The moving dotted background makes it impossible to read anything..

vincnetas•4 minutes ago

oh my... for me its sure way to induce motion sickness...

alienbaby•12 minutes ago

My thought exactly. What a terrible background!

fofoz•about 1 hour ago

These products are still in their early stages, but it is clear that the AI wave is reaching 3D modeling as well. It will impact mechanical and civil engineering just as it has impacted software development.

tadasv•about 1 hour ago

3d modeling for use in software (games or similar) imo is fine, but I would love to not see this stuff in civil engineering. People without AI are unable to design buildings that don't collapse (e.g. recent NYC apartment highrise), adding AI into the mix will just make things worse.

fragmede•about 1 hour ago

Why do you presume it will make it worse instead of better? Humans, as you point out, could not manage to competently review buildings that don't collapse. Why would adding an additional level of checks (human or AI) do worse than not adding one?

tayo42•26 minutes ago

Ai isn't being used to make competent people better but tries to give supposed expertise to people who don't have skill in that area.

yieldcrv•about 1 hour ago

hastily adding AI in into the mix will make things worse

its good to be skeptical, better to spur competition and address any limitations to competition functioning quickly

jrflo•about 1 hour ago

I don't think so. As a mechanical engineer, CAD is only half of the design process. The other half is actually building and assembling your design and testing/debugging what you've created. You still need the mechanical knowledge and intuition to take something in the physical world, figure out why it doesn't work, and apply that to the CAD design to improve it. It would be incredible to have AI help me model faster, but there's no validation loop like there is with software, so you can't have an agent run wild and endlessly iterate.

altcognito•about 1 hour ago

> CAD is only half of the design process

I'm not a mechanical engineer but I would be surprised if it was even 30% of the process. Materials, manufacturability, durability, fitting into other requirements. Some of those things can be part of the CAD design, but there's so much more.

Not to say that CAD isn't a big chunk!

cpcabbge•15 minutes ago

> As a mechanical engineer, CAD is only half of the design process.

Same thing can be said about animation and games.

ur-whale•about 1 hour ago

None of the things you list in the "other half" are out of reach for AI.

Also: disagree about the lack of validation loop:

   a) AI can actually build one for you in many cases

   b) if you give agents an actual validation toolkit, you'll be surprised what AI can do

Of course, if you expect to prompt "give me a NURBS model of a complete, working v8 motor" and get a result, then yeah, sure, we're not there yet.

I've actually built a bunch of stuff with a combo of astra, blender, openscad and tiny bits of AI written helpers ... giving the AI the proper "hands" to work with the models is key.

One particularly useful tool to provide the AI with is to be able to "look" at the model as it iterates on it (measure dimensions, shoot arbitrary rays at it that return exact intersections and normals, see if the object obeys engineering constraints, etc ...).

Works pretty well for many, many things and saves a TON of time.

jrflo•26 minutes ago

AI cannot physically build anything in the real world, what are you referring to? That's a huge part of mechanical engineering.

And you can give it simulation tools, but those are far far away from accounting for everything in real-world physics. You can simulate very tightly constrained problems, but you can't simulate "assemble this actuator and test it", there are so many more variables in the real world that are not easy to account for in a simulation.

If you aren't an engineer that works on physical products, it's hard to articulate just how far from reality CAD and simulations are.

Foobar8568•43 minutes ago

Considering the ability of men to aim in urinals, Cornucopia is really one of the worst idea.

dreamerworkz•about 1 hour ago

I love the web design though! Formas.ai has been doing great work in the visualization space, and it’s great watching them tackle 3D via the very apt name Cartesian. Defo support what they are doing. Maybe I can finally sleep better too!

virtualritz•about 2 hours ago

"Architecture and product design" but no STEP/IGES/BRep output, just triangles?

dofm•about 2 hours ago

Actually this appears to output 3DM, which is the CAD format Rhinoceros 3D uses, and is based on openNURBs. The typically tiny Claude (?) text (such as I can read it) makes it clear it's not just a mesh format, mentions faces and edges.

On that basis it is a step up from the usual AI CAD silliness.

leetrout•about 2 hours ago

Is the site owners are here: that background and scroll effect is terrible.

dofm•about 2 hours ago

Indeed — I try to stay away from website design critique here and it's against a rule, but that dot field makes it actually impossible for me to read, especially given the low text contrast and small fonts on the body text.

jonwinstanley•about 2 hours ago

Came to the comments to say something similar.

mcluck•about 2 hours ago

I usually kind of roll my eyes when people complain about visual effects on a website but I wholeheartedly agree. It makes it very difficult to read

yieldcrv•about 1 hour ago

adding representation to the silent non-bothered audience, I like the scroll effect here and don't find it terrible

ricardobeat•about 1 hour ago

I've just started working on 3D modeling software of my own, though this looks to be far ahead. Mostly focused on 3D printing - creating printable models is pretty expensive and tedious at the moment, and fully native.

[1] https://tomasimodeler.com (pardon the AI-slop, it's just a placeholder)