Very cool and quite advanced compared to my tool. I've been working on something similar, although not an addon for SolidWorks, but a web SaaS. Initially started it as a tool to help my grandpa make some simple models (ChatGPT clicked for him SolidWorks was impossible).

Still have a long way to go, but if anyone wants to try you can do it here: https://grandpacad.com

If you want more free credits send me an email and I'm happy to give you some.

I am really curious about speed/latency. For my use case there is a big difference in UX if the model is faster. Wish this was included in some benchmarks.

I will run 80 3D model generations benchmark tomorrow and update this comment with the results about cost/speed/quality.

Interesting. I’m building a SaaS around this idea. And I managed to do things waaay more complex than that using LLMs. Especially “several times”. My AI can do a parametric trophy cup from one prompt in a couple of attempts, I would be shocked if it didn’t know how to make rectangular cube…

There was quite a bit of interest in the 3D modeling data when Gemini 3 was released[0]. So I have decided to write about my findings.

It's the first time ever I am submitting a link to my AI 3D Modeling software (even if it's just a blog post), so I would appreciate any feedback - or request for other data you may want to see.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45968426

Just generated a bunch of 3D CAD models using Gemini 3.0 to see how it compares in spatial understanding and it's heaps better than anything currently out there - not only intelligence but also speed.

Will run extended benchmarks later, let me know if you want to see actual data.

Just hand sketched what 5 year old would do on the paper - the house, trees, sun. And asked to generate 3d model with tree.js.

Results are amazing! 2.5 and 3 seems way way head.

Based on my benchmarks (run 100s of model generations).

2.5 stands between GPT-5 and GPT-5.1, where GPT-5 is the best of the 3.

In preliminary evals Gemini 3 seems to be way better than all, but I will know when I run extended benchmarks tonight.

Sorry to ask 7 days late, but what sort of prompt do you use to get it to do it? I tried the same exercise but it just placed the image in 2D in the 3D world. Much like Paper Mario but not what I was going for! Thank you.

I'm interested in seeing the data.

Is observed speed meaningful for a model preview? Isn’t it likely to go down once usage goes up?

I'm not familiar enough with CAD what type of format is it?

It’s not a format, but in my mind it implies designs that are supposed to be functional as opposed to models that are meant for virtual games.

It generated a blender script that makes the model.

I would have used OpenSCAD for that purpose.

I started with a lighter weight solution (JSCAD) first and quickly hit the limitations. So I wanted to explore the other side of it - fully complex over the top software (blender).

I guess openscad would be a sweet spot in the middle. Good shout, might experiment.

Blender is not CAD. Edit: I’m not but picking. Totally different data structures and internal representations.

Three.js is not CAD. It is an API for drawing 3D graphics in a browser. 3D graphics, in general, is not CAD. Blender is not CAD. You cannot do CAD operations in blender.

I'm not being nit picky here. I think there are issues beyond terminology that you may not be familiar with, as it is clearly not your field. That's ok.

The "design" in computer aided design is engineering design. This is not the same definition of "design" used in, say, graphic design. Something is not called CAD because it helps you create an image that looks like a product on a computer. It is CAD because it creates engineering design files (blueprints) that can be used for the physical manufacture of a device. This places very tight and important constraints on the methods used, and capabilities supported.

Blender is a sculpting program. Its job is to create geometry that can be fed into a rendering program to make pretty pictures. Parasolid is a CAD geometry kernel at the core of many CAD programs, which has the job of producing manufacturable blueprints. The operations supported map to physical manufacturing steps - milling, lathe, and drill operations. The modeling steps use constraints in order to make sure, e.g., that screw holes line up. Blender doesn't support any of that.

To an engineer, saying that an LLM gave you a blender script for a CAD operation is causing all sorts of alarm klaxons to go off.

Thanks for clarifying. I'm just getting into this field.

If Blender can export a .3mf file format and slicer gets it ready for 3D printing (gcode that actually instructs the printer head). Is the slicer actually CAD software?

And if you can export many formats that work with some manufacturing devices and you built a model in blender, did blender not help you with CAD?

Where does CAM? Fit into your view?

In high school CAD/CAM we used various CAD programs for designing (sculpting?) things and then imported them into CAM to generate g code programs, set tool constraints and such

Next they'll be doing PCB CAD in Photoshop...

> Blender doesn't support any of that.

... without plugins. https://www.cadsketcher.com/

The "-like" in CAD-like is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

Did your prompt instruct it to use blender?

Yes. I’ve been working and refining the prompt for some time now (months). It’s about 10k tokens now.

Would you mind sharing the prompt please?

Zero magic in this world, sorry.

Can’t wait to test it out. Been running a tons of benchmarks (1000+ generations) for my AI to CAD model project and noticed:

- GPT-5 medium is the best

- GPT-5.1 falls right between Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT-5 but it’s quite a bit faster

Really wonder how well Gemini 3 will perform

What kind of API subscription are you using? I found opencode to be incredibly expensive - prompts costing $5, while with aider I did it for <$0.1.

Thanks, the 3D asset creators are very interesting. I'm working on LLM -> CAD tool (for 3d printing) and your post confirms that I should keep my focus, because there is so much other things to do (uv unwrapping!) if you are targeting games for example.

> What's the difference between this and Jupyter?

It's noob friendly. Even the installation process. No need to manage python. Just use the app.

> Besides this seemingly needs an account with Atuin to work.

You don't need an account to use it.

I wonder if they already ran the A/B tests or are they still running it. If they did and this proves to be more successful than what they had before, then it changes a lot how I think about website design.