Alternatives
Products that do what DSLCad – a programming language and interpreter for building 3D models does
Hey HN. Over the last half a year I have been working on a 3D CAD programming language called DSLCAD. Today I am here to show my first release! It is heavily inspired by OpenSCAD which got me hooked on the idea of a CAD programming language and what it can do. Please let me know what you think. Ill be in the thread to answer any questions you may have.
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Hey HN! I'm Zach from Adam (https://adam.new/). We’re building an AI co-pilot for mechanical CAD software. As part of our broader research, we built a browser-based Text-to-CAD app (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182206) and are now open sourcing it. This is a React SPA with a Supabase backend. What it does: * Generates parametric 3D models from natural language descriptions, with support for both text prompts and image references * Outputs OpenSCAD code with automatically extracted parameters that surface as interactive sliders for instant dimension…
2025 · github.com
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LuaCAD models solids in Lua rather than the OpenSCAD language, with operator overloading for CSG (`a + b`, `a - b`, `a * b`). It ships with a CLI and a desktop app, including a preview area and a text editor. I've always been a big fan of OpenSCAD, but the SCAD language itself is unfortunately quite cobbled-together and is a very poorly designed programming language. LuaCAD takes all the good parts of OpenSCAD and combines them with one of the best scripting languages. It has now completely replaced OpenSCAD for me, and I think it provides a better experience than OpenSCAD for all use cases.…
23d ago · luacad.ad-si.com
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Hello HN users, This is a CAD by code project I have been working on on my free time for more than year now. I built it with 3 goals in mind: - It should be familiar to CAD designers who have used other programs. Same workflow, same terminology. - Reduce the mental effort required to create models as much as possible. This is achieved by: - Provide live rendering and visual guidance as you type. - Allow the user to reference existing edges/faces on the scene instead of having to calculate everything. - Provide interactive mouse helpers for features that are hard to write by code: Only 3…
Apr 2026 · fluidcad.io
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Mar 2026 · firthemouse.github.io
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We’re Robin, Louis, and Thomas. Pipelex is a DSL and a Python runtime for repeatable AI workflows. Think Dockerfile/SQL for multi-step LLM pipelines: you declare steps and interfaces; any model/provider can fill them. Why this instead of yet another workflow builder? - Declarative, not glue code: you state what to do; the runtime figures out how. - Agent-first: each step carries natural-language context (purpose, inputs/outputs with meaning) so LLMs can follow, audit, and optimize. Our MCP server enables agents to run pipelines but also to build new pipelines on demand. - Open…
Oct 2025 · github.com
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Hi HN, I’m the creator of SynapsCAD, an open-source desktop application I've been building that combines an OpenSCAD code editor, a real-time 3D viewport, and an AI assistant. You can write OpenSCAD code, compile it directly to a 3D mesh, and use an LLM (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, ...) to modify the code through natural language. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN8a5UozS5Q A bit about the architecture: - It’s built entirely in Rust. - The UI and 3D viewport are powered by Bevy 0.15 and egui. - It uses a pure-Rust compilation pipeline (openscad-rs for parsing and csgrs…
Feb 2026 · github.com
- 11AIAI in SolidWorks▲191
Hey HN! We’re Will and Jorge, and we’ve built LAD (Language-Aided Design), a SolidWorks add-in that uses LLMs to create sketches, features, assemblies, and macros from conversational inputs (https://www.trylad.com/). We come from software engineering backgrounds where tools like Claude Code and Cursor have come to dominate, but when poking around CAD systems a few months back we realized there's no way to go from a text prompt input to a modeling output in any of the major CAD systems. In our testing, the LLMs aren't as good at making 3D objects as they are are writing code,…
Jan 2026 · trylad.com
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I'd like to share a new workbench I've been working on called DiffCAD. Coming from a software engineering background, not having the ability to properly diff my CAD model changes was driving me crazy. This project scratches my own itch, and maybe someone elses', too! I'm open to feedback, ideas, and contributions. Cheers!
May 2026 · github.com
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Hey HN, I'm a beginner at CAD so I built an app that does it for me ;) Describe a part and ChatToSTL writes the OpenSCAD code, shows a live render with size sliders, then exports the STL/3MF file. Because the output is parametric, it's easy to modify (unlike mesh models like Shap-E or DreamFusion). Try it (needs your own OpenAI key): https://huggingface.co/spaces/flowfulai/ChatToSTL How it works: Text prompt → o4-mini generates OpenSCAD code → live render + sliders → refine in chat → export. Examples & Code: * Walkthrough + real prints (bowl, hook, box, door…
2025 · huggingface.co
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Mar 2026 · lab.puga.com.br
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Jun 2026 · glyphcss.com
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2016 · prandtl.design
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Hi HN, I'm Zach, one of the co-founders of Adam (https://adam.new). We've been on HN twice before with text-to-CAD/3D experiments [1][2]. The honest takeaway from those threads: prompt-to-3D model web apps are fun, but serious mechanical engineers don't want a black box that spits out an STL. They want help inside the CAD tool they already use, with full visibility and control over the feature tree. So we built that. Adam is now a harness that integrates directly with your CAD. It reads your parts, understands the existing feature tree, and edits it for you agentically. We are…
May 2026 · fusion.adam.new
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Hi HN, Over the past few months, I've been building `dsc`, a tensor library from scratch in C++/CUDA. My main focus has been on getting the basics right, prioritizing a clean API, simplicity, and clear observability for running small LLMs locally. The key features are: - C++ core with CUDA support written from scratch. - A familiar, PyTorch-like Python API. - Runs real models: it's complete enough to load a model like Qwen from HuggingFace and run inference on both CUDA and CPU with a single line change[1]. - Simple, built-in observability for both Python and C++. Next on the roadmap is…
2025 · github.com
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Hi, everyone! I built SHDL (Simple Hardware Description Language) as an experiment in stripping hardware description down to its absolute fundamentals. In SHDL, there are no arithmetic operators, no implicit bit widths, and no high-level constructs. You build everything explicitly from logic gates and wires, and then compose larger components hierarchically. The goal is not synthesis or performance, but understanding: what digital systems actually look like when abstractions are removed. SHDL is accompanied by PySHDL, a Python interface that lets you load circuits, poke inputs, step the…
Jan 2026 · github.com
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My friend and I have been working on Arcad for some months now. It's a free browser-based parametric CAD tool aimed at hobbyists and makers. It has editable feature history, solid modeling powered by OpenCascade, STEP export and touch controls for tablets, although it's primarily made for PC use. Everything runs in the browser and you can try it without creating an account or installing anything. Currently in beta although we feel like it's ready for a full launch. Any feedback is appreciated! Link: https://app.arcad.studio Docs: https://www.arcad.studio/docs
Aug 2026 · app.arcad.studio
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Hi, we're Sergey and Serafim. We've been building dev tools at 21st.dev and recently open-sourced 1Code (https://1code.dev), a local UI for Claude Code. Here's a video of the product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgk9Z-nAjC0 Claude Code has been our go-to for 4 months. When Opus 4.5 dropped, parallel agents stopped needing so much babysitting. We started trusting it with more: building features end to end, adding tests, refactors. Stuff you'd normally hand off to a developer. We started running 3-4 at once. Then the CLI became annoying: too many terminals, hard to…
Jan 2026 · github.com
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Mar 2026 · github.com
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