I disagree. My co-worker is an industrial designer and uses Rhino as his day to day CAD tool of choice. I was delighted to see that it translates everything you do to a command line syntax and there's also Python integration. We did some simple tests the other week and you can actually prototype reasonably well by instructing an LLM to generate the Python code that creates the models. It still requires fine tuning but seems like a similar multiplier like using LLMs for programming to get the boring boilerplate out of the way.
I'd say a good designer will at least 2x, probably 5x. We are preparing to test with students next semester to see how non-experts profit from this.
Edit: I realize I was imprecise, I specifically was referring to 3D CAD for mechanical parts of the type you would generally produce a print for i.e. with controlled geometry and dimensioning.
A) That's a surface modeler.
B) Parametric CAD doesn't have boilerplate in the same way as software. In a part, you have a feature tree, and a lot of thought goes into constructing the feature tree in a way that both allows for reconfiguration and also somewhat resembles the manufacturing process. Every step depends on the previous step in a way that is necessarily impossible to isolate. If you make a step without being aware of the end state of the tree, you will probably have to redo a bunch of the tree if the part is complex.
Also that's not what mechanical engineers spend most of their time doing. Plenty of MEs can code and use an LLM btw, nothing stopping them from optimizing their work processes if they saw fit, yet you don't really see the shoehorning of AI into the space yet.
Exactly. People act like if an LLM can't get it 100% perfect right away then it's a useless tool. Maybe they're be able to do that one day.
But in the meantime I think it's brilliant if it can rough something out, then a human can go and tweak it to the correct dimensions, fix issues or simplify needlessly complex features.
Same thing for artists as well - many will come to realise that sure it generates slop, but that slop is still useful as a skeleton to overlay a human creative vision onto.
I can't tell you how many times I've had to redo my feature tree because I built a feature on a part out of order. Tweaking dimensions that you didn't expect to have to tweak very often also breaks your feature tree.
If you don't know what a feature tree is, it's really worth investigating how parametric CAD is actually done before insisting that LLMs must have a business case for MCAD users!
For hobby widgets and gewgaws you can absolutely make an "approximate object" in Blender, spit out an STL and bounce it to your 3D printer and probably maybe have it work. That workflow is not really used in industry.
I _know_ what a feature tree is, I use fusion every couple weeks. CAD is not some magical hard thing to do, except perhaps for more complex parts where it's a software problem (like mirroring the features of a surface to the other side but being unable to flip them...thus text is mirrored, thanks Fusion). Constraints are indeed a pain in the ass but that's literally their purpose.
And my opinion is still that an LLM could rough out a simple model just fine. It won't be designing engine parts any time soon but simple parts I still reckon it could rough 'em out.
I'd say a good designer will at least 2x, probably 5x. We are preparing to test with students next semester to see how non-experts profit from this.