As a mechanical engineer, I feel the part of my job is safe from AI for the time being. I don't think quality training data for good mechanical design exists.
3D CAD is only part of good design. To a tinker-er that is 3D printing simple parts, an STL is fine. But most parts that matter require far more design consideration and detail than simply the geometry data that an STL (or other 3D file) provides.
The majority of parts are accompanied with a drawing, and that is where the real design actually is found: Tolerances, GD&T, materials, processing notes...
Even then, most of the calculations and considerations to build the model and drawing are not explicit in the design documents: Nothing about a drawing of a stainless steel part tells you WHY it must be a stainless steel part. I don't think there is a large set of well documented designs out there to act as training data for an AI system to design an assembly beyond basic 3D parts.
The authors identify this gap, but it's a fundamental problem with the wholesale move to AI in mechanical design.
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qwery
"box with a hole in it" resulted in a number of boxes and most of these did obviously have holes in them. some did not appear to, but being that they were largely enclosures for some sort of device (as opposed to storage or transport) I'll assume there was some hidden fastener clearance holes or something.
I really only wanted one hole in my box though, so I adjusted the query to "box with a single hole in it". the results looked indentical. except for one that stood out. I would link to the particular model, but there was no way to do that. this model appears to be a rectangular bathroom basin, on its side. I'd describe it as perhaps a ~currently fashionable porcelain design, but it could be a concrete 'getting shit done' sink, or a model from The Sims (the first one). so box-like perhaps, but not many people would describe it as a box. I guess my search continues (elsewhere)...
(actually interesting bit about natural language: I know that a box with two (or more) holes in it has a single hole in it, but most English natural language parsers (humans) will notice that specifying 'single' would be redundant if I wanted any number more than zero, so it's extremely unlikely that I was looking for a multi-hole box.)
where did you steal the models from, by the way? just curious. the original context in which they were found would actually be helpful if someone was for some reason trying to actually use this as a tool. [ed: saw the OP's comment down the page -- you can include a comment with the submission IIRC]
also if you don't have the 3D model spinning incessantly, having the page open won't be obnoxious and it won't (have to) waste power
DavidFerris
We rendered the one million part ABC dataset from Deep Geometry, and open-sourced the data. We also built a fun demo with the following pipeline: CAD > render > caption > embed.
Neat, but also hilarious! Searching for "mug" gives results where the first item listed (ABC-00008297) is a mug model with a hole not only in the top to pour in your drink, but also in the side and bottom (just in case you wanted more access to your liquid).
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Cieric
Door knob seems to return a bunch of chess pieces and analog sticks, I did get a few doors and a few knobs, but nothing I recognized as a door knob. I didn't spend a super long time looking though so that might have been the problem there. Also suggestion, giving the ability to link to specific models might be useful (I tried a few things on mobile, url doesn't change and searching for a specific model ID doesn't return the model).
damslunk
searched for 'bong', would not smoke out of any of the objects returned, 0/10
bouchard
The approach could be helpful for searching though large 3D model libraries like GrabCAD for some visual placeholder part by just describing it.
The generality of the part descriptions made me chuckle.
> A bevel gear with a circular base and a series of angular, tapered teeth extending radially outward. The teeth are uniformly distributed around the circumference, allowing for meshing at an angle with another gear. The gear's face includes a set of holes, varying in size and symmetrically arranged around the central bore, likely for weight reduction or mounting purposes. The central opening likely acts as an axle or shaft attachment point. The design facilitates the transmission of rotational motion between intersecting shafts, typically at a 90-degree angle.
notpublic
Thanks! In my search for a good STL for the following, your app gave me the closest model so far!
I tried Google/Claude etc. But none worked. As per Claude, the technical name for that is Pillow Block Bearing/Shaft Coupling Block/Flange Mount Bracket. Funny thing is, your app didn't return any good result when I search with any of those terms.
After reading your blog post, I searched for "block with 2 holes". And lo and behold, it returned ABC-00162357!
Couple of suggestions:
1) Have a permanent link for each model
2) Show related models when a model is clicked
3) and lastly, show models based on an image
edit: Search for "mounting block" returned ABC-00180735 which is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much for making this!
jsejcksn
When I search for "duck shaped trampoline", I see mostly fidget spinners…
I searched this for "WAGO" and "XT90", so I guess not the same use case. Some hits for "Raspberry Pi", though.
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ge96
I like how the models have varying degrees of accuracy eg. a Raspberry Pi 4B some are simple volumetric, others seem to have every surface mount component which is crazy... wonder if that was 3D scanned.
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tamimio
Amazing!
I hope you make it a real site as I noticed usually these vercel apps go offline after few months.
bstsb
i tried “apples” and got lots of nuts-and-bolts models?
edit: looks like the data is trained from machinery parts. impressive regardless, but i’d add that to the lander
show comments
bobtheborg
Try searching for "glasses" and you get a page full of blocks?
d_runs_far
two searches gave me absolute ridiculous results: chair, laptop. Back to re-learning fusion for me :-)
latchkey
I put in "dog bone" and it just returned a bunch of random things.
jlarks32
Sick project. Great work. Thanks for the HF dataset as well.
Neat.
As a mechanical engineer, I feel the part of my job is safe from AI for the time being. I don't think quality training data for good mechanical design exists.
3D CAD is only part of good design. To a tinker-er that is 3D printing simple parts, an STL is fine. But most parts that matter require far more design consideration and detail than simply the geometry data that an STL (or other 3D file) provides.
The majority of parts are accompanied with a drawing, and that is where the real design actually is found: Tolerances, GD&T, materials, processing notes...
Even then, most of the calculations and considerations to build the model and drawing are not explicit in the design documents: Nothing about a drawing of a stainless steel part tells you WHY it must be a stainless steel part. I don't think there is a large set of well documented designs out there to act as training data for an AI system to design an assembly beyond basic 3D parts.
The authors identify this gap, but it's a fundamental problem with the wholesale move to AI in mechanical design.
"box with a hole in it" resulted in a number of boxes and most of these did obviously have holes in them. some did not appear to, but being that they were largely enclosures for some sort of device (as opposed to storage or transport) I'll assume there was some hidden fastener clearance holes or something.
I really only wanted one hole in my box though, so I adjusted the query to "box with a single hole in it". the results looked indentical. except for one that stood out. I would link to the particular model, but there was no way to do that. this model appears to be a rectangular bathroom basin, on its side. I'd describe it as perhaps a ~currently fashionable porcelain design, but it could be a concrete 'getting shit done' sink, or a model from The Sims (the first one). so box-like perhaps, but not many people would describe it as a box. I guess my search continues (elsewhere)...
(actually interesting bit about natural language: I know that a box with two (or more) holes in it has a single hole in it, but most English natural language parsers (humans) will notice that specifying 'single' would be redundant if I wanted any number more than zero, so it's extremely unlikely that I was looking for a multi-hole box.)
where did you steal the models from, by the way? just curious. the original context in which they were found would actually be helpful if someone was for some reason trying to actually use this as a tool. [ed: saw the OP's comment down the page -- you can include a comment with the submission IIRC]
also if you don't have the 3D model spinning incessantly, having the page open won't be obnoxious and it won't (have to) waste power
We rendered the one million part ABC dataset from Deep Geometry, and open-sourced the data. We also built a fun demo with the following pipeline: CAD > render > caption > embed.
Open-sourced dataset: https://huggingface.co/datasets/daveferbear/3d-model-images-...
Blog writeup: https://www.finalrev.com/blog/embedding-one-million-3d-model...
Neat, but also hilarious! Searching for "mug" gives results where the first item listed (ABC-00008297) is a mug model with a hole not only in the top to pour in your drink, but also in the side and bottom (just in case you wanted more access to your liquid).
Door knob seems to return a bunch of chess pieces and analog sticks, I did get a few doors and a few knobs, but nothing I recognized as a door knob. I didn't spend a super long time looking though so that might have been the problem there. Also suggestion, giving the ability to link to specific models might be useful (I tried a few things on mobile, url doesn't change and searching for a specific model ID doesn't return the model).
searched for 'bong', would not smoke out of any of the objects returned, 0/10
The approach could be helpful for searching though large 3D model libraries like GrabCAD for some visual placeholder part by just describing it.
The generality of the part descriptions made me chuckle.
> A bevel gear with a circular base and a series of angular, tapered teeth extending radially outward. The teeth are uniformly distributed around the circumference, allowing for meshing at an angle with another gear. The gear's face includes a set of holes, varying in size and symmetrically arranged around the central bore, likely for weight reduction or mounting purposes. The central opening likely acts as an axle or shaft attachment point. The design facilitates the transmission of rotational motion between intersecting shafts, typically at a 90-degree angle.
Thanks! In my search for a good STL for the following, your app gave me the closest model so far!
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41hGjsBlrKL._AC_SL1000_....
I tried Google/Claude etc. But none worked. As per Claude, the technical name for that is Pillow Block Bearing/Shaft Coupling Block/Flange Mount Bracket. Funny thing is, your app didn't return any good result when I search with any of those terms.
After reading your blog post, I searched for "block with 2 holes". And lo and behold, it returned ABC-00162357!
Couple of suggestions: 1) Have a permanent link for each model 2) Show related models when a model is clicked 3) and lastly, show models based on an image
edit: Search for "mounting block" returned ABC-00180735 which is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much for making this!
When I search for "duck shaped trampoline", I see mostly fidget spinners…
Interesting.
My go-to for CAD files is usually https://grabcad.com/library
I searched this for "WAGO" and "XT90", so I guess not the same use case. Some hits for "Raspberry Pi", though.
I like how the models have varying degrees of accuracy eg. a Raspberry Pi 4B some are simple volumetric, others seem to have every surface mount component which is crazy... wonder if that was 3D scanned.
Amazing!
I hope you make it a real site as I noticed usually these vercel apps go offline after few months.
i tried “apples” and got lots of nuts-and-bolts models?
edit: looks like the data is trained from machinery parts. impressive regardless, but i’d add that to the lander
Try searching for "glasses" and you get a page full of blocks?
two searches gave me absolute ridiculous results: chair, laptop. Back to re-learning fusion for me :-)
I put in "dog bone" and it just returned a bunch of random things.
Sick project. Great work. Thanks for the HF dataset as well.