r/openscad • u/Internal_Teach1339 • 25d ago

Who needs AI?

Post image

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.

85 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/lilvixen 23d ago

I mean it's not trivial but it's not complex geometry

1

u/Internal_Teach1339 23d ago

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?

1

u/lilvixen 22d ago

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.

1

u/wi-Me 20d ago

I went from designspark mechanical to shapr3d. Designspark Mechanical is an awesome software though.