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Re:Show HN: AI in SolidWorks by doctorpangloss on Monday January 12, 2026 @12:34PM (#46591626)
it's definitely interesting, but the demo of the coffee mug has a lot of flaws, are there some concrete examples you can think of where the hosted LLMs really shine in this problem?
Re:Show HN: AI in SolidWorks by jasongill on Monday January 12, 2026 @03:35PM (#46593940)
What are the flaws?

I've watched the video a couple times and the only thing I can see that it does wrong is the fillets on the handle (and maybe the way it used a spline & sweep for the handle could have been improved but it's no worse than you'd see from a new Solidworks user).

Re:Show HN: AI in SolidWorks by its_ethan on Monday January 12, 2026 @06:23PM (#46595570)
Not sure if it's a "flaw" or not, but I always get stuck on AI + 3D design stuff with there being no dimensional information or control.

How big is that mug? Slowing it down and trying to catch some dim info the initial cylinder has a radius of ~39. Regardless of if that's default inches, that's one hell of a mug.

Sure you can scale it, but it's not great practice to design something and then just apply a scaling to get it to the intended size.

Re:Show HN: AI in SolidWorks by WillNickols on Monday January 12, 2026 @09:52PM (#46596838)
All the dimensions are in mm by default, so 39 mm radius on a mug is about right. For all their flaws, the LLMs do usually provide reasonable dimensions.
Re:Show HN: AI in SolidWorks by its_ethan on Tuesday January 13, 2026 @10:58AM (#46602707)
That's fair, it just bothers me when examples are like "a block with two holes in it" and sure the result is a block with two holes, but when are you going to want that without having those two holes in very specific spots at a specific size? lol
Re:Show HN: AI in SolidWorks by WillNickols on Monday January 12, 2026 @12:41PM (#46591700)
Honestly, the out-of-the-box models aren't great at CAD. We were mostly trying to figure out (1) how well it could do with the best harness we could give it and (2) whether people would want and use this if it worked well.