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A comment on KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rust and WebGPU. Parent comment

Re:KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rus... by japanuspus on Monday November 09, 2026 @02:23AM (#50422197)
Been through the same journey -- and have been super annoyed each year when I paid the several hundred dollar license for a tool I didn't use much, but really needed when I did use it.

My exit has been FreeCAD with an MCP-bridge, letting me talk to an agent that implements my requests directly in the FreeCAD file I have open. Works super well with FreeCAD which has all the features I need, but where they can be hard to discover.

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Re:KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rus... by W0lfEagle on Monday November 09, 2026 @03:35AM (#50422758)
Same. Working in FreeCAD with agents is actually pretty awesome.
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Re:KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rus... by anentropic on Monday November 09, 2026 @07:20AM (#50424595)
Out of curiosity, how do you tell the agent what you want - just describing it in words? Or draw something and scan it in?
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Re:KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rus... by khafra on Monday November 09, 2026 @08:58AM (#50425688)
I can't tell you how the parent commentor does it, but I saw an excellent reproduction of some historical building done by Astra in headless blender, using photographs, blueprints, and contemporary descriptions. Frontier models are smart enough to incorporate just about any kind of evidence you can give them about what you want, so give them everything.
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Re:KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rus... by abirch on Monday November 09, 2026 @09:09AM (#50425850)
I've used Claude (Opus) and Gemini (Argon) for Blender for some 3D printing. The work reasonably well, I'll have to try Astra next.
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Re:KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rus... by vishalontheline on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @12:56AM (#50450139)
I describe the problem I have, how I think I'd like to solve it, ask it for feedback and ask it to create a model. Then, iterate.
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