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316 points pabs3 | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.835s | source
1. pbronez ◴[] No.42171897[source]
Real bummer. I’m keeping an eye on Zoo (fka KittyCAD) for my personal CAD work https://zoo.dev/
replies(1): >>42172030 #
2. Double_a_92 ◴[] No.42172030[source]
Am I missing something, or is that just a fancy openSCAD?
replies(1): >>42172820 #
3. pbronez ◴[] No.42172820[source]
Zoo and openSCAD both create 3D objects using code in a domain specific language. Other than that, very different. OpenSCAD has limited ambitions; Zoo wants to kill Autodesk.

Zoo is building a commercial grade product suite from first principles. They're writing a new geometry kernel and optimizing it for GPUs. They wrote a new domain specific language for CAD [0]. They're running the kernel on the cloud behind an API, streaming video to the client and billing by the server-minute. Ideally that will deliver great performance and keep the tool accessible to casual users.

The really exciting thing, for me anyway, is they want to unify design-by-code, design-by-mouse, and design-by-ai. Start with a plain language description of what you want. Get a fully parametric object on your screen. Click around making adjustments. Pull up the code and make precise changes. Keep a complete changelog in git.

Anyway, much more detail here: https://zoo.dev/blog/mechanical-cad-yesterday-today-and-tomo...

[0] https://github.com/KittyCAD/kcl-samples

replies(1): >>42173124 #
4. Double_a_92 ◴[] No.42173124{3}[source]
> They're running the kernel on the cloud behind an API, streaming video to the client and billing by the server-minute.

That sounds absolutely horrible though. There is no chance of it being truly free because the servers cost money. You are fully locked-in in that system. It won't work offline. You can't use it for secret projects...

Unless it's intended for companies to run the API on their own servers?