Started yesterday as a joke without any code reference if not papers. Because of fillets already better than TinkerCAD for certain stuff. There is something odd, here: in theory open source should explode right now, but we don't have, apparently, folks motivated to do wonders.
Sep 17, 2026 · 1:44 PM UTC
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@antirez Which language and UI library did you use to build this?
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@marc_in_space C language, from scratch 3D solids engine, Sokol UI.
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@antirez In the last 6 months FreeCAD has gone from one of the most neckbeard jokes in CAD to a really polished piece of software that even TinkerCAD users can pick up and use with a few Youtube tutorials.
I’d attribute that shift entirely to LLM coding models.
I’d attribute that shift entirely to LLM coding models.
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@antirez VibeCAD is literally what you are asking for. BYOAI, FOSS.
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@antirez Honestly if there’s a thing I’m ready to pour my soul into, it would be a CAD, “professional” CAD software is yet another area where mechanical engineers are scammed, but universities brainwash them to hate anything open source by instinct.
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@antirez there's a reason CAD software is hundreds of millions of lines of code. building a simple nurbs engine with addition and subtraction and simple ordered workflow is trivial.
there's a reason why foss CAD software is so basic: this is a stupidly hard problem.
there's a reason why foss CAD software is so basic: this is a stupidly hard problem.
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@antirez Wrapping the complexity of mechanical CAD (especially professional, parametric) into a friendly and reliable UI is very challenging. As you add features, interactions grow exponentially. I wish you good luck. The world needs a new open-source CAD written from scratch.
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@antirez I don’t know about open source, but my computer is exploding for sure. But it isn’t easy to start at 31 with no background
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@antirez you are looking in the wrong places. @alightinastorm for example has a whole crew
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@antirez We really don’t. That’s always been true. Evolution heavily biases towards follow over lead…
An abundance of food turned a few people into modern versions of Hercules, and the rest into couch potatoes. I imagine an abundance of intelligence will play out in a similar pattern…
An abundance of food turned a few people into modern versions of Hercules, and the rest into couch potatoes. I imagine an abundance of intelligence will play out in a similar pattern…
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@antirez Or maybe open source doesn't have enough tokens
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@antirez The number of Linus Torvalds -like people is the bottleneck?
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@antirez ambitions take time and confidence to adjust. last year building a bare metal lisp OS from scratch was irrational. this year it comes with a web browser and a dozen media codecs modus-lisp.github.io
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@antirez Cool! I’ve also been working on a replacement for SolidWorks. Saves our company 10k/year. Already mostly good for what we do - as we use and find a gap I just add a feature. I wonder if that’s how it’ll be for more tools. It’s here if you are interested: github.com/oloapiu/plains…
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@antirez AI is good at doing the prototype. However if we wish OTHER people to use the software, reliability becomes one of the biggest concern. I am structural engineer, and we must be able to trust our tools to do the most of the stuff right. It takes time to build that reliability.
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@antirez Curiosity without permission. The best tools I’ve seen start as someone refusing to keep using the broken thing. What are you building because the current version insults you?
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@antirez Wrote a whole tower defense sim in 3,360 lines of plain JS. Zero deps, zero build step, 23 tests under node --test, spec to deployed in about 76 minutes. The floor dropped a long way. Most people are still aiming at the old ceiling.
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@antirez Avec Claude IA, nous travaillons avec openscad et aujourd'hui blender. Incroyable...
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@antirez Sto lavorando in questo settore, specialmente per le aziende piccolissime/solopreneur che spesso non hanno specialisti della modellazione 3d. Se posso aiutare, in qualsiasi modo, sarebbe un piacere. Anche solo feedback/QA.
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@antirez youtu.be/3QXI_aTKVGI?is… salvatore non mi ricordavo che avessi dei capelli così lunghi!
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@antirez Opportunities are exploding! I built this with a huge amount of AI agents. It is a unique Lego CAD with physics, and exploration system.
brick.machine.construction
It’s Not open source, but that’s because it’s mostly built on my stack that I use for my real work.
brick.machine.construction
It’s Not open source, but that’s because it’s mostly built on my stack that I use for my real work.
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@antirez mbare ma con che llm ? o tisei messo su a codare old school perche sei un pazzo furioso ?
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