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Antimony: CAD Software Evolved from Lisp Machines and Not Drafting Tables

51 points by pmkary 2 days ago | 11 comments

mkeeter 3 hours ago

This could use a (2015) label :)

I've been tapering off maintenance since 2016 or so, but it has a more actively-maintained fork over at https://github.com/nsfm/stibium (albeit with heavy LLM assistance, because it's 2026!)

YMMV – I haven't used it or closely inspected the changes, but have corresponded with the author, who seems genuinely dedicated in the success of the project.

adastra22 2 hours ago

What are you working on these days?

WillAdams 2 hours ago

This probably merits noting that the whole Code CAD thing is getting pushed very hard lately with many new AI-driven projects.

I will note the following projects which have made recent advancements:

- OpenSCAD --- the hopefully final Release Candidate for the long-awaited update is now available: https://openscad.org/downloads.html#rc

- PythonSCAD --- for folks who want variables which change and so forth: https://www.pythonscad.org/

- CADquery --- https://cadquery.github.io/

- Build123D --- https://github.com/gumyr/build123d

Longer list/discussion at: https://github.com/Irev-Dev/curated-code-cad

Also, a more recent project by Matt Keeter, Halfspace was announced recently but didn't get much discussion here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49881890

badlibrarian 3 hours ago

To anyone else who had to parse early KiCad file formats, where the parentheses and quoting on S-expressions was more of a guideline than a rule, I salute you.

IshKebab 3 hours ago

I was all ready to say how useless code-based CAD usually is (like OpenSCAD), but this actually looks pretty sick.

If you could add support for SolveSpace's 2D sketcher, and also bevels/fillets, then this might actually be useful.

leoedin 39 minutes ago

It's not really useless though. Yes, in some dimensions it is terrible compared to GUI parametric CAD. But in other dimensions it is far more powerful and lets you build really complex stuff quickly and easily.

WillAdams 2 hours ago

I am currently trying to apply code-based CAD principles to my current project:

https://studio.flet.dev/run/bicQWc3Aul

do you know of a traditional CAD program which could be used to drive such designs/projects in a useful fashion? I'm currently contemplating a re-write to use a Domain Specific Language....

YuechenLi 57 minutes ago

Would you be interested in evaluating (or having your LLMs check out) my geometry kernel Aetheris for your project? I already have DSL (called Firmament) parser/lexer/AST part down, and it is designed to be easy to extend, so you don't have to write everything from scratch.

https://github.com/yuechen-li-dev/Aetheris

One of my goals when I built the kernel is I want to make building a pro grade CAD software as easy as wrapping a web frontend around the Aetheris libraries. It's still very much an aspirational goal though.

WillAdams 13 minutes ago

Interesting. I'll have to try to look into what the integration of flet.dev/Python w/ that code looks like.

GabeIsko 2 hours ago

What is your beef with code based, parametric CAD? It's pretty neat.

maouida 3 hours ago

You might also like FluidCAD (I'm the author). It uses js as scripting, but all features can be done through the UI. It has a constraint based 2D sketcher, timeline and assemblies.