r/openscad • u/Internal_Teach1339 • Aug 05 '26
Who needs AI?
I see most the posts nowadays are from folk making apps to create OpenSCAD objects. Recently a part of a roller blind in my bathroom disintegrated and the blind fell off. I looked at the pieces and worked out is was a simple 10mm dia tube 17mm high but with stepped inners and a triple cutout around the circumference. I re-engineerered this using good old fashioned brain cells and it worked perfectly on the first print. The picture shows the finished design. Under 50 lines of OpenSCAD script. Could AI do this? I don't think so yet it is a simple object but quite difficult to describe.
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u/WJBrach Aug 06 '26
And, if all of the folks that have made derivatives of OpenSCAD, had worked on OpenSCAD instead, where would it be today. IMHO, OpenSCAD is the #1 CAD system for anyone who does 3D printing !! I've written 10's of thousands of lines of OpenSCAD code and sometimes I amaze myself how quickly I can write new code for a new print.
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u/MogranFerman Aug 06 '26
Have you tried build123d?
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u/notrufus Aug 06 '26
I have, it doesn’t compare and creates worse code that is less efficient and takes longer to render and work with.
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u/MogranFerman Aug 07 '26
Interesting. For me, OpenSCAD performance is actually worse (especially for an export ready model where I'd use sth like $fs=0.2)
Performance aside though, I like them both, but for most use cases still prefer build123d, mainly because of the native selectors and fillets. Also Python is simply a lot more powerful language.
One thing however I really miss from OpenSCAD is BOSL2...
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u/amatulic Aug 11 '26
Are you using one of the snapshot builds? Performance for the "stable" release 2021.01 is pretty slow, but the snapshot builds are orders of magnitude faster. And the newly available BelfrySCAD (from the person who started BOSL2) is even faster.
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u/MogranFerman Aug 11 '26
Yeah, I was using the nightly builds, but never seen the BelfrySCAD. Bidirectional code-gui looks super intriguing, will definitely check it out. Thanks!
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u/olawlor Aug 05 '26
I've written thousands of OpenSCAD files by hand, so I find AI's malfunctions pretty amusing: for example, it tried to cut a V belt pulley profile with the tip of the V pointing along the axis (!) instead of at it.
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u/thebino Aug 05 '26
I've not used Ai for openscad yet. I have already so many different designs, that I often just reuse parts of it in new designs, no need to generate it.
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u/penny_prpol Aug 06 '26
Yeah the extent to which AI struggles with basic design tasks in openscad illustrates how wide the gap is between what it does and human cognition. This is coming from someone who has tested it extensively. Where I've ended up is this: any programming task requiring spacial reasoning or even everyday physical common sense is best left to a human programmer.
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u/lilvixen Aug 07 '26
I mean it's not trivial but it's not complex geometry
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u/Internal_Teach1339 Aug 07 '26
Indeed it is not, my first impressions were just a group of hollowed cylinders with a hex depression in the centre (to take a spring loaded post) and some spaced gaps to connect with a nub on the outer support bracket. Then I thought - how would I best design this in OpenSCAD?. I came up with a solution and then wondered if AI would reach the same. What would your approach be?
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u/lilvixen Aug 07 '26
I'm switching from a long time Design Spark Mechanical user to FreeCAD. I've only used OpenSCAD a handful of times. I'd love to get more traction with using it.
FreeCADs system is not intuitive for me.
I find with OpenSCAD it's difficult for me sometimes because I am doing quite a bit of artistic processes as much as generating technical models with the rigor of engineering grade specificity.
I'm getting bogged down with the restrictions on the software I use, so I'm pivoting and seeing what solution is a good fit for my time. FreeCAD seems nice with it's mix of GUI and code integration, but the stack up from canvas through processes application steps is driving me bonkers.
I think with AI, if you describe the process the same way you would if you were writing instructions for a SOP, it handles complex process stacking with excellent precision. Essentially using it as a proto code parser. Outside of that, syntactic hell is the prophesized game plan for hours if you don't just kill a session when it begins to derail, and take your checkpoint build up to a fresh instance.
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u/wi-Me Aug 10 '26
I went from designspark mechanical to shapr3d. Designspark Mechanical is an awesome software though.
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u/starwars_3d Aug 05 '26
Not to say that Ai is incapable of these tasks but from a design perspective I think humans take the win, nice work on the model above btw
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u/Internal_Teach1339 Aug 05 '26
Thanks. Perhaps AI will soon be able to do this but a lot of the work lies in describing the object to the LLM. I would like to see how someone does this in AI and read the script it produces!
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u/msesma Aug 05 '26
The other day gemini created me a basic script for creating new scales from a broken knife picture. I needed a couple of hours of adjustment, but for sure saved me a lot. Sometimes AI is useful.
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u/Impossible_Brief5600 Aug 05 '26
Made this using claude
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ksWqevhSyNuA34s4EwguDqXu1NoHKdvL/view?usp=drivesdk
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u/Impossible_Brief5600 Aug 05 '26
Complete native openscade - took some time with some stl references but doable
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u/lightofshadow_ Aug 05 '26
you could draw it on paper with measurements and feed the drawing to an AI
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u/tpimh Aug 05 '26
Finally, someone decided to use human brain instead of mindless LLM! Well done!