Check out https://zoo.dev/

I went from OpenSCAD -> cadquery/build123d -> Zoo/KCL

It still is early days, and it needs some more helper functions but it's really nice having two-way capabilities (not just code -> model, but also the reverse).

Of course having Text-to-model as a first class citizen is also nice.

I have played with this but been underwhelmed. However I do think probably on the right track.

I know the ecosystem not-at-all (sum total knowledge of the CAD ecosystem is that my kids got a Bambu printer for Hanukkah) but it feels to me that current LLMs should be able to generate specs for something like https://partcad.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, which can then be sliced etc.

Curious to know what others think? I come at this from the position of zero interest in developing the fine design skills needed to master but wanting to be able to build and tweak basic functional designs.

I want to like Zoo but the rendering engine is so buggy currently that it’s not really usable for more than simple shapes. The text-to-CAD feature they highlight is slow and error-prone, so much so that they explicitly use a “prebuilt” version in the tutorial, and each time I tried it, it gave tool errors or took so long I just did it manually.