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- Hacker News
- Looks cool.
One task that is always time consuming for a mech design team is generating library parts. Mcmaster carr or other vendor model downloads are one thing, but they never have everything you need, and I don't want a separate model for each and every size/configuration of part. There are still plenty of parts that you can't get a model so have to generate it from scratch using data and pictures from a pdf catalogue.
I want a single model containing all the available configurations of that product.
I just had a go with the Onshape connector to generate such a model of a simple BSPT hex reducing nipple for piping. It looks promising but didn't quite get there and hit the daily token limit while I was trying to get it to fix the model.
FYI when I hit the token limit and click the 'See plans' link, I get "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred."
by Momentusdot - Been following you guys a while, seems like you've been gaining some traction recently, lets goo and congrats!
I have been working on GrandpaCAD[0] for a while, a very similar product. I thought of you as my biggest competitors but noticed recently you are focusing more and more on professionals while I am focusing on total noobs in modeling who just want to whip out a quick model. So I guess we are not competitors anymore?
My evals[1] show that Opus 4.7 and GPT 5.5 are very comparable in terms of generation quality, but GPT 5.5 is slower and costs sooo much more in my harness. And the original breakthrough model was Gemini 3.1. I'm curious do you have more written about your benchmarks setup?
If you want to chat email is in my profile. Btw, just met "your"(?) neighbour on a plane a couple of days ago. World is small.
[1]: https://grandpacad.com/en/blog/public-benchmarks-misled-me-o...
by ponyous - Following this with interest - I'm an ex-SolidWorks AE and was recently trying to use FreeCAD (which I didn't get on with as it's very different to what I'm used to).
I found a FreeCAD MCP which I was driving with Claude Code and got mixed results. I was using it to do the tedious task of matching up a PCB design with specific LED positions to an enclosure design (having built a little util to design KiCAD PCBs using Claude https://github.com/edcs/kicad-yaml).
I've moved back to OnShape now, so it's great to see a new tool out there which connects to the tools I'm used to.
by edcs - If Anthropic starts entering the engineering space, OpenAI and others may follow.
The key question is: why would your tool or harness perform better than the frontier model providers’ own native tools, such as Claude for Creative Work, if your product is only a thin layer on top of their model or their agentic system?
Similarly, why would your tool work better than a CAD company’s own agentic tool? For example, it would not be very difficult for PTC to add an Onshape co-pilot that calls the Claude Agent SDK, while PTC can also build more powerful internal tools/MCP servers for their own use without exposing them to external API users.
by little_cad - I'd love something like this for FreeCAD.by nickthegreek
- Mechanical Engineer here, stop using AI to deal with the most enjoyable part of design PLEASE
An automated drafting too where I can describe design intent and requirements would be a million times better, especially if it is CAD context aware.
I would say around 5-20% of mENG is not actually modelling, the endless pursuit of text to cad and other ai works is both not helpful and not enjoyable
(PS: The feature tree renaming does look very useful)
by vablings - As someone with a background in mechanical engineering, I'd love to be able to automate CAD design as it's quite tedious and only fun like 5% of the time, but I've tried these tools and I really don't think text-to-CAD is the right approach. It usually takes longer for me to come up with an accurate written prompt to fully dimension what I need than to just grab my space mouse and do it.by jrflo