Show HN: AI CAD Harness
Source: Hacker News
Introduction
Hi HN, I’m Zach, one of the co‑founders of Adam (https://adam.new).
We’ve previously posted about text‑to‑CAD/3D experiments on HN [1][2]. The key takeaway: prompt‑to‑3D model web apps are fun, but serious mechanical engineers need a tool that works inside the CAD environment they already use, with full visibility and control over the feature tree.
What Adam Is
Adam is a harness that integrates directly with your CAD system. It reads your parts, understands the existing feature tree, and edits it for you agentically. It is currently available in beta on Onshape and Fusion.
- Install link – Autodesk Fusion: https://fusion.adam.new/install
- Install link – PTC Onshape: https://cad.onshape.com/appstore/apps/Design%20&%20Documenta…
Current Use Cases
- Merge redundant features and clean up the tree
- Rename every feature so the tree is readable
- Apply a 2 mm fillet to all internal edges
- Parametrize the model
- Generate CAD end‑to‑end using Adam
Design Philosophy
- CAD as code – Our harness leverages Onshape’s FeatureScript and Python in Fusion.
- Benchmark‑driven model selection – We run an internal CAD benchmark across frontier models. Recent releases (e.g., GPT 5.5 and Opus 4.7) show a massive jump in spatial reasoning capabilities [4][5].
- Open source foundation – Our earlier text‑to‑CAD work is open‑sourced [6].
Related Work
A note on the Anthropic Autodesk connector that shipped a few days ago [7]: we think it’s great for the space and validates the direction.
How Adam Differs
- Model‑agnostic – We select the best frontier model for each task type based on our internal benchmark, rather than being tied to a single provider.
- Native integration – Adam lives directly inside your CAD apps, and we are actively building integrations across all major programs.
Call to Action
What would you want an in‑CAD agent to do that nothing does today?
References
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44182206
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45140921
[3] https://x.com/adamdotnew/status/2050264512230719980?s=20
[4] https://x.com/adamdotnew/status/2044859329329893376?s=20
[5] https://x.com/adamdotnew/status/2047795078912172122?s=20
[6] https://github.com/Adam-CAD/CADAM
[7] https://x.com/claudeai/status/2049143440508616863?s=20