[HN Gopher] Show HN: Hestus - AI Copilot for CAD
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Show HN: Hestus - AI Copilot for CAD
Hello! We're Kevin and Sohrab from Hestus (https://www.hestus.co).
We're working on an AI copilot for CAD. Today we're releasing a
simple sketch helper for Fusion 360 and would love your feedback.
Here's a quick demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9n_eY-fM_E.
Why we're doing this: Mechanical engineers excel at generating
initial design concepts but get bogged down translating ideas into
final designs due to tedious, repetitive tasks. Our goal is to
automate these mundane processes, allowing engineers to focus on
the creative aspects of design. Having worked at multiple hardware
companies--from medical devices to space launch vehicles--we know
how often "trivial" components such as manufacturing rigging, get
brushed under the table in scheduling conversations. These tasks
aren't necessarily complex, but they take time and still require
the rigor of production components. From finding the perfect
fastener to making sure mounting holes align, we aim to simplify
and accelerate the design process from the complex to the mundane.
We're tackling this problem similarly to how coding copilots help
programmers work faster. Initially, rudimentary coding assistants
offered simple suggestions like auto-completing variables. Now,
they understand complex tasks, write entire code blocks, and help
fix bugs. We're taking this step-by-step approach, starting with a
beta that focuses on sketching. Our sketch helper offers design
suggestions, such as applying equality constraints to similarly
sized circles or adding tangent constraints between lines and
curves. While designers can do these tasks manually, they often
require dozens of precise mouse clicks. Our software makes
suggestions that you can preview and accept to streamline your
workflow. Over time we aim to improve at anticipating your needs
and expand beyond sketching to other design aspects like resolving
interference issues, auto-generating bills of materials with
purchase links, and offering manufacturability suggestions. How
this is different from other solutions: we've heard of complete
generative part design solutions, but we don't believe this top
down approach is the best way to assist mechanical engineers.
Engineers excel at and enjoy designing new concepts--we want to
focus on streamlining the most tedious aspects. Crucially, we find
that generative solutions often overlook manufacturability, a key
aspect of design. We invite you to try our sketch helper and share
your thoughts! If you can think of any additional features that
would make it more useful to you, we'd love to hear what they are.
Any and all feedback is welcome!
Author : kevinsane
Score : 104 points
Date : 2024-09-03 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.hestus.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.hestus.co)
| 2four2 wrote:
| I've used CAD nearly every day for my entire engineering career,
| and this feels like a logical step. My day is filled with a
| tedium of micromanaging Solidworks or NX to simply do what I
| need. It takes very little time for me to envision a solution,
| but it takes ages of clunking through UI to actualize it. I'll be
| on board once you have SW support, I'd be interested in
| implementing it immediately.
|
| My questions: 1) What's your CAD background? 2) What led you to
| realize that this was a problem that needed solving?
| baq wrote:
| I've no idea what I'm looking at but it looks cool. Could use a
| bit of an explanation what 'HV lines' are (don't look high
| voltage to me!) or why 'equating circles' is a good idea for us
| non-mechanical engineers.
| progbits wrote:
| HV probably means horizontal/vertical. You can see the CAD tool
| snapping to H/V line several times in the demo video and they
| intentionally make it crooked. Same with circles, if you draw
| it similar size as previous feature most CAD tools will snap
| and highlight adding equality constraint.
|
| Honestly the demo is both convoluted and not convincing, but
| also trivial and I don't see where AI comes in. The HV feature
| can literally be `abs(angle-90deg) < 1deg`. And randomly adding
| constraints without deeper understanding is how you end up with
| poorly constrained geometry that won't work once you change
| design parameters.
| lima wrote:
| The hard part is not backing yourself into a corner with the
| feature tree over time. Takes a lot of practice to avoid, and
| that's something AI could help with. Meanwhile, what their
| demo does is trivial.
| zackangelo wrote:
| I wonder if the prevalence of coding LLMs will bring renewed
| attention to code-based modeling systems like OpenSCAD. It seems
| much easier to get them to generate code vs. translating into GUI
| interactions or modifying some other internal state directly.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'm sure there will be some value, especially as the LLM
| systems become capable of doing more of the work, but as a
| professional robotics engineer with a focus on mechanical
| engineering, OpenSCAD just cannot perform appropriately to
| serve as a primary CAD platform for professional mechanical
| design. Parametric GUI based design has so many advantages, a
| key one being that you can click on a feature and change it
| easily.
| progbits wrote:
| I think both approaches have merit, I find the ability to
| have proper libraries/functions (such as "place M4x8 socket
| head countersunk bolt here") is really nice, though I'm
| faster with the click&change approach for exploratory design.
|
| However the thing holding OpenSCAD back is the fact it is CSG
| (basically booleans on primitives) which is just not good
| enough for non-trivial parts. More interesting tool is
| cadquery[1] which uses the OpenCASCADE b-rep kernel. Still
| not as powerful as commercial offerings sadly, but at least
| on the right path to get there.
|
| [1] https://cadquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
| lincoln20xx wrote:
| I've been using build123d (based on cadquery) quite a bit
| and I really like it. I still use solidworks for
| simulations, drawings, and most fillet operations - because
| it turns out that doing fillets right is very non-trivial.
|
| Code-cad is great because you get exactly what you put in,
| but sometimes it can feel like starting with a bucket of
| logic gates instead of a microcontroller.
|
| I've had "test LLM's with code-cad" on my todo list for a
| while, as I think it has the possibility of greatly
| accelerating the production of the additional part
| libraries that I'd need to able to make more regular use of
| it.
| whazor wrote:
| You could model the internal state like code that a LLM can
| work with.
| mc007 wrote:
| that's right; and its pretty good at this, see here a few
| examples : https://git.osr-plastic.org/osr-plastic/osr-
| ai/src/branch/ma... (check the generated scad files). For some
| reason, chat-gpto looses relations, after 5+ parts within an
| assembly.
| alexose wrote:
| I've been wondering the same thing. Unfortunately, I've found
| that GPT-4o is much less good at OpenSCAD than it is at Python.
|
| It feels totally untrained on the step-by-step logic you need
| to build things in a programatic way. This is likely a problem
| with not having enough training data.
| FractalHQ wrote:
| Surely all of GitHub is "enough training data"
| alexose wrote:
| Well, there's a lot less OpenSCAD on GitHub than Python. At
| first glance maybe a few orders of magnitude less.
|
| But the bigger problem is (probably) not the lack of code,
| but the lack of good tutorials and well-documented
| libraries. And since there's no package manager
| (https://github.com/openscad/openscad/issues/3479) there's
| still no agreed-upon way to reuse code between projects.
|
| All this is conjecture, of course. LLMs are mysterious
| beasts.
| smcleod wrote:
| This looks like pretty much the exact kind of thing I've wanted.
| I'm just a very occasional user of Fusion 360 for personal 3d
| printing use - and I'm pretty terrible with CAD especially if I
| haven't used it in a few weeks.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Was a Mechanical Design Engineer for about a decade. Personally,
| the CAD part was the easy and fun part (Used Solidworks, Creo,
| Inventor, Catia v5 extensively. Professionally trained in all
| four as well). The "tedious" part was SAP (part number and
| material management), drafting, ECN/R/O, BOM handling, etc. I
| would be more excited for "AI" for PLM like Windchill,
| TeamCenter, or Cadedge (or whatever SAP PLM packages you used)
| blackguardx wrote:
| What do you do now? Did you switch to software?
| syntaxing wrote:
| Yup, had the opportunity to switch to full time software a
| couple years back so I jumped at the opportunity.
| ultrasounder wrote:
| Echo this. As an EE fun part is circuit design and the tedious
| part is SAP and agile. This is where AI needs to be. Parts
| creation from data sheets, and automatic sync between SAP and
| Altium/cadence.
| luastoned wrote:
| The plugin does not load with Fusion 2.0.19994
| kevinsane wrote:
| Hi Luastoned, Can we get your contact info so that we can help
| diagnose the issue?
| kevinsane wrote:
| Hi, we messed up. If you try downloading again, hopefully it
| should work. Sorry for the trouble
| ned_at_codomain wrote:
| That bit about auto-generating BOMs is awesome. Any chance you've
| thought about supporting the engineer with cost-saving
| recommendations?
|
| I met a bunch of aerospace engineers a long time ago -- thinking
| about working on a software product in contract manufacturing or
| PDM -- and a common theme was the struggle to optimize the design
| for cost of manufacture.
|
| Seems like something you guys are thinking about if focused on
| manufacturability.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Any chance you've thought about supporting the engineer with
| cost-saving recommendations?
|
| ? As someone said: the most expensive is the microcontroller.
| If you remove it, you save a lot of costs.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| My brother in law is in construction and has built and project
| managed dozens of houses, small apartment blocks etc. He said
| that if a building job doesn't require planning permission (small
| extension, temporary structure, certain farm buildings, large
| sheds, pergolas, verandas, sunrooms etc) then the customer might
| ask if he can save money by skipping the architect and engineer.
| A competent builder can generally work that stuff out, but it
| does still require rudimentary drawings (elevation, plans, end
| view) and some spacial figuring out. And like a lot of
| construction guys he has almost zero computer skills, so this
| shit is literally pencil, paper, squares and rulers.
|
| I always wondered if there's a VR app (or market for one) that
| can map out an area and let you virtually model your project
| within it using standard building components (9" solid blocks,
| cavity blocks, lengths of timber in standard sizes, various
| sheets materials etc). It should be able to do basic calculations
| (rafter spans, roof pitch etc). Once you're done, it spits out
| CAD files, bill of materials etc. Bonus points for looking up
| local suppliers and offering to order everything for you, or even
| modifying the design to accommodate what's available.
|
| It's a completely different project and target audience to OP's
| app, so sorry for the tangent.
| Animats wrote:
| There are tools like that, but they tend to be specific to one
| brand of prefab. [1]
|
| [1] https://impresamodular.com/design-modular-home-plan-using-
| in...
| Animats wrote:
| That's neat.
|
| Autodesk Fusion already knows how to apply those kinds of
| constraints. This is an easier way to input them. The general
| problem is to express "what am I pointing at" in cluttered
| situations. Just figuring out how to do that was a huge problem
| in CAD. For decades, you had to have multiple views on screen
| just to select. The UI for doing it in one view was really tough.
|
| It still doesn't translate well to fat-fingered devices such as
| tablets and phones. There are lots of construction people who
| could really use a tablet that has the design, knows where it is
| in space, and shows what's supposed to go there.
| albumen wrote:
| I'd suggest re-doing the YouTube video so it's
| legible/understandable when viewing on mobile. Full desktop UI
| demos don't really work on mobile; need to zoom and highlight
| etc.
| christkv wrote:
| Is anyone doing something in the space for architecture mockups?
| I was talking with a friend who is an architect and he would love
| a tool that could iterate designs.
| turnsout wrote:
| This doesn't really seem like a copilot, but it's still cool! It
| reminds me of the plugins for Glyphs [0], which allow font
| designers to speed up their process.
|
| [0]: https://glyphsapp.com/features#plug-ins
| graypegg wrote:
| Neat! At first glance, I was a little worried this was a "make me
| a hinge, Hestus!" sort of AI integration. This seems very
| logical! Coming from CAD from the purely hobbyist 3D-printing
| side of things, I'm pretty familiar with the tedium of some
| operations, (mostly because I can only assume I do most things
| wrong) so it makes a lot of sense to automate the scripts that
| would otherwise be an annoying task of "click part A... click
| arc... click the pivot point... click part B..."
| s1mon wrote:
| I've been using parametric CAD (Pro/E / Creo, Solidworks, and
| Onshape) for 30+ years. Automatically adding sketch constraints
| is nothing new. Just about any 2D sketching tool out there will
| have some sort of snapping and/or auto-constraint-adding system.
| What's often more frustrating is fixing things when they get
| accidentally over-constrained. Solidworks tries to help with this
| in the form of cycling through what it thinks are the most likely
| constraints to remove and then re-solving the sketch. It's OK,
| but that sort of tool could be better.
|
| A number of popular CAD systems use the D-Cubed 2D sketch
| constraint solver [0]. Siemens owns this and the Parasolid
| kernel, along with NX. All have been in constant development
| since the 80's. I really question what major new problems a
| startup is going to fix in 2D sketching constraints. I'm sure
| there a bunch of small quality of life things which may be out
| there, but most of the hard issues are more 3D or spline related,
| not finding things which could be tangent or equal.
|
| Probably the biggest paradigm shift with constraints that still
| hasn't really taken off is what Siemens is doing with SolidEdge.
| It allows for defining the 3D equivalent of constraints between
| surfaces, holes, edges, etc. and then using direct modeling
| techniques to modify solids. Perhaps adding more intelligence to
| that approach would make direct modeling more popular.
|
| Onshape has innovated in the way that it's brought Google Docs-
| like collaboration and GITHub like versioning, branching and
| merging to parametric CAD. Nothing else has these capabilities at
| the moment. To me that has been one of the most innovative
| changes in the mechanical CAD industry.
|
| Onshape also has FeatureScript, which is the programming language
| which describes all the parametric features. Right now, none of
| the LLMs know FeatureScript well enough to be the least bit
| useful. They hallucinate wildly. I'd be very happy to have a
| Copilot for FeatureScript.
|
| [0] https://plm.sw.siemens.com/en-US/plm-components/d-cubed/
| lima wrote:
| Agreed, sync modelling in Solid Edge and NX can be really
| powerful, especially when requirements change unexpectedly.
| delhanty wrote:
| > I've been using parametric CAD (Pro/E / Creo, Solidworks, and
| Onshape) for 30+ years.
|
| True - I implemented the first Solidworks Autodimension sketch
| as a contractor around 2002 based upon earlier work that I'd
| done for a consultancy client at D-Cubed in the late 1990s. I'm
| sure it could be improved with AI and a large data set of
| sketches though.
|
| > Solidworks tries to help with this in the form of cycling
| through what it thinks are the most likely constraints to
| remove and then re-solving the sketch. It's OK, but that sort
| of tool could be better.
|
| I agree it could be better. The behavior with under-constrained
| sketches depends on D-Cubed's DCM, and I seem to recall they
| were rather floppy. It seems kind of ridiculous to make users
| jump through the hoops of making sketches fully constrained
| once they've added the constraints they care about.
| acyou wrote:
| Nice work!!
|
| I tried to run it, but got an API Error:
|
| Due to some internal changes made to the Fusion API, the Add-In:
| 'sketch_helper' from 'Hestus, Inc.' cannot be loaded. You need to
| install a new version of the Add-In that is compatible with this
| version of Fusion.
|
| Can you just put it up on the Autodesk app store?
|
| I struggle with this model, because of the capture by Autodesk
| and the other CAD providers. If you read the Autodesk EULA, I
| think it prohibits use of any open-source software in these add-
| ins. And I don't think anyone can use this software outside of
| Fusion 360. And if this add-in becomes popular, Autodesk can
| trivially release something that has the same functionality,
| built into Fusion 360 by default. And, as you are no doubt
| painfully aware, the Fusion API can be limiting.
|
| If you can have your LLM ingest a non-parametric CAD model and
| spit out a parametric model with a beautiful, complete, editable
| feature tree full of Extrudes, fully defined parametric sketches
| with these nice constraints, all tied to the sketch origin, now
| that's something.
|
| I think Autodesk BIM is $5000/mo/user, Fusion is $500/mo/user. I
| have thought that means the money is in architectural/structural.
|
| As a side note - one other tip I have, for all CAD users
| everywhere: avoid Tangent relationship wherever possible! Stick
| to vertical/horizontal on the lines and arc endpoints, and you
| will be golden. The Fusion sketch solver is badly compromised, it
| can't do more than two or so simple successive Tangent relations
| without bugging out. And, my experience with Solidworks is the
| same, not sure if this is still true.
|
| Curious if you dealt much with the Fusion constraint model, and
| have any insights into why it works so poorly, or even how it
| works? Many times, you click on a line, and it turns from blue to
| black, and back to blue again.
| acyou wrote:
| I looked up that error, I don't have any experience with
| compiled python code, but this is interesting:
|
| Script Error
|
| The message you received results from an add-in loaded on your
| machine that has compiled Python code that will be incompatible
| with the next update of Fusion or is incompatible with the
| current version of Fusion. This message is displayed when
| Fusion upgrades to a newer version of Python, and add-ins
| compiled against the previous version will no longer work.
|
| If the message says, "The script will not be supported in the
| next version.", this is a warning telling you Fusion will no
| longer be able to load this add-in with the next Fusion update.
| When you get the update and the add-in quits working, you'll
| need to get an updated version of the add-in from the Autodesk
| App Store or directly from the app developer. Unfortunately,
| you can't preemptively get a newer version because the new
| version of the add-in will not function with the current
| version of Fusion, you will need to wait until after the
| update.
|
| If the message says, "The script is not supported in the
| current version.", this is an error indicating Fusion could not
| load the add-in. You need to get an updated version of the add-
| in from the Autodesk App Store or directly from the app
| developer. App developers are contacted to let them know they
| will need to update their apps to be compatible with the new
| Python version, and the updated apps should be available as
| soon as the Fusion update goes out. If an update is not
| available, you should contact the app developer. App Developers
|
| If you're a developer of an add-in for Fusion, use Python, and
| deliver any pre-compiled modules (.pyc files) with your add-in,
| this update will break your add-in. It will be broken because
| pre-compiled modules are tied to the version of Python used to
| compile them. Add-ins compiled with the current version of
| Python (3.7) will not be compatible with the updated Python
| (3.9) and will fail to load. This change DOES NOT affect any
| add-ins that do not deliver any pre-compiled modules and the.py
| source code is available. For detailed information about what
| you need to do to update your add-in and have it available for
| your customers at the time when the Fusion update goes out, see
| this forum post with the latest information.
|
| Then it links to this, which is talking about Python 3.7 vs.
| 3.9.7, but that's from 2022:
| https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/fusion-api-and-scripts/import...
|
| Would you need to release the source code then? Would there be
| the same problem with C++? How can people develop these sorts
| of apps without having to release the source code?
|
| I'm on Fusion 2.0.19994 x86_64
| kevinsane wrote:
| Yes. We messed up, if you redownload hopefully it will work!
| I'm sorry about that
| acyou wrote:
| Still didn't work for me. I think it's stuck in my system
| now.
|
| I think Fusion copies the add-in to a different directory,
| which I need to go find and manually delete. These add-ins
| should really have a Windows Installer function so that I can
| run the uninstaller to remove it, or have it run the
| uninstaller when the add-in loads or something to wipe the
| old files.
|
| This is part of the problem with these add ins in general. I
| just installed this thing on my computer, I can't see the
| python source code, and what did I install and run??? Even if
| I could see the source, I don't have time to read it. That's
| why they have the app store, so that it can get reviewed to
| make sure it's OK. Any reason why you didn't just publish on
| there?
|
| I should really take the advice of the old guys who say don't
| trust it if you can't see the source. I'm sure you mean well,
| but I would feel better/safer if it was open source.
|
| Is there anyone who has made an AI LLM that reviews source
| code or an installer that you want to run and tells you if it
| does anything problematic? Would that also work on compiled
| Python source code?
|
| Curious if you linked to the Python libraries, or copied them
| in with the add-in? Or were you able to avoid most libraries
| for this?
| delhanty wrote:
| [delayed]
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