AI CAD Harness
Dev tools
cad ai agent
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
6 positive, 15 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 17 critical, out of 40 comments about the project. Thread score -0.21.
Idea: 5 for, 12 againstExecution: 0 for, 3 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 againstPricing: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Feature tree renaming is useful
From 2 comments
Mechanical Engineer here, stop using AI to deal with the most enjoyable part of design PLEASE An automated drafting too where I can describe design intent and requirements would…
vablings on HNBeing somewhat context aware and automagically renaming features is pleasant
vablings on HN
Connects to Onshape tools engineers already use
From 1 comment
Following this with interest - I'm an ex-SolidWorks AE and was recently trying to use FreeCAD (which I didn't get on with as it's very different to what I'm used to). I found a…
edcs on HN
Objections
Text-to-CAD is tedious to prompt and slower than modeling by hand
From 2 comments
As someone with a background in mechanical engineering, I'd love to be able to automate CAD design as it's quite tedious and only fun like 5% of the time, but I've tried these…
jrflo on HNThat still sounds much slower than actually making it yourself. Also you have to take extra time to review the agent's work. The idea of it making subtle errors, hard to find,…
varispeed on HN
AI errors in engineering work are risky and hard to review
From 2 comments
Mechanical engineer here. The idea of having to sift through every intricate detail this thing spits out, just to guard against one hallucinated miscalculation making its way…
rambojohnson on HNThat still sounds much slower than actually making it yourself. Also you have to take extra time to review the agent's work. The idea of it making subtle errors, hard to find,…
varispeed on HN
Does not support the user's CAD tool
From 1 comment
> Adam is now a harness that integrates directly with your CAD It does not integrate with "my" CAD, which happens to be none of the two closed-source, closed-ecosystem,…
ur-whale on HN
Requests
FreeCAD integration
From 2 comments
I'd love something like this for FreeCAD.
nickthegreek on HNIs there any possibility of integrating with FreeCAD?
shivasurya on HN
Sketch constraints and parametric relationships
From 1 comment
From the OnShape demo videos in the tweets, it looks like sketches are unconstrained. Can this create constraints or other parametric relationships between entities? And does…
my_username_is_ on HN
Library part generation with configurations
From 1 comment
Looks cool. One task that is always time consuming for a mech design team is generating library parts. Mcmaster carr or other vendor model downloads are one thing, but they never…
Momentusdot on HN
Questions
How are sketch constraints handled and does it use the API quota
From 1 comment
From the OnShape demo videos in the tweets, it looks like sketches are unconstrained. Can this create constraints or other parametric relationships between entities? And does…
my_username_is_ on HN
Is there a Revit version
From 1 comment
Any plans to make this available for Autodesk Revit? Congrats on the launch.
subcontact on HN
Alternatives named
Zoo.dev
From 2 comments
Obligatory mention of https://zoo.dev/ the leader in this space. I will say I explored this reasonably deeply and came away with the conclusion that even though we have OpenSCAD…
XiZhao on HNhttps://zoo.dev/ allows you to re-iterate on the same model over and over with prompts, without resorting to creating a new model from scratch every time.
dackdel on HN
OpenSCAD
From 1 comment
There are more elegant solutions to this problem. Why are you trying to get an LLM to work with bloated, archaic tools that you have to rent from a feudal lord in the cloud when…
cjtrowbridge on HN
Anthropic Autodesk connector
From 1 comment