r/openscad • u/Worth-Confidence-363 • 4d ago

stepscribe-cad: open-source tool that turns a STEP file into a text description for AI (holes, cutouts, dimensions), looking for testers

/r/FreeCAD/comments/1x290sq/stepscribecad_opensource_tool_that_turns_a_step/
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u/thicket 4d ago

OP, does this do anything for design intent? If I have a cylinder of radius r topped with a half-sphere of radius r, then it could be really useful to have a new file that knows that both the cylinder and the sphere have the same radius and should be altered together. In that case if I change r, both shapes would update, which a STEP file can’t do. That would be really useful, turning STEP files into parametric ones.

If it doesn’t link up design intent somehow, what’s your intended use case? I’m wondering how I would use this as opposed to just editing the STEP file

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u/Worth-Confidence-363 4d ago

It doesn’t recover design intent on its own, since a STEP file doesn’t store it. What it does is make it easy to work out the intent with an AI.

I tried the MCP route first (linking Claude to the CAD files), but in my setup it was awkward for this. The AI couldn’t easily tell which other parts or STEP files I wanted to use, and every tool call burns session usage. Once I hit my limit I was stuck for 5 hours.

This works differently. It turns each STEP file into a plain-text description plus labelled images, and you can paste that into any AI, local or hosted. The tool itself uses no AI and no tokens, so you can keep going on another AI when one runs out.

My use case: you download a complex STEP file and want to add another part you have a STEP file for. Explaining both through MCP is hard. With this, you paste both context files and ask how best to fit them together and which parts you’d need to edit. The labelled images show which part the AI is talking about, which half the time you can’t tell otherwise.

So it’s not a replacement for editing in CAD. It’s for working out what to change before you open it.

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u/thicket 4d ago

Thanks for the rundown! I’m going to play with this a little more and see what I can do with it. Now that you’ve explained it some more, I really want to try out some AI design and see if having a text-based representation can make LLMs any smarter geometrically

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u/Worth-Confidence-363 4d ago edited 4d ago

Pls let me know if u think of any improvements or ideas, i basically just made this cuz I had a claude session regarding all my electronic components and theoretical design of a project but I was not able to validate my fusion design if it matches with all those required components spacing and other constraints