"he only way to get the desktop modeler was to pay several hundred per year, which wasn't worth it to me. "

This comes up so often it's good to explain what happened there.

They were not out to extract value from consumer.

They retargeted the offering to professional engineering and architecture firms.

SketchUp was originally an offering for the AEC market. Then Google bought it and essentially pivoted it to consumer offering. Then Trimble bought it and pivoted it back.

I do realize this hurts the person who is a non-professional user but AFAIK SketchUp sales have never been better.

So it's not a pivot out of stupidity or malice, it's just a pivot.

The main customers - engineering and architecture companies - seem to be fine with it.

If you were an engineer CAD manager it would be odd to pay hundreds per seat a year for a product consumers can get for a pittance. So it's about pricing power I guess as well.

And do agree as a consumer there should be better options.

Been through the same journey -- and have been super annoyed each year when I paid the several hundred dollar license for a tool I didn't use much, but really needed when I did use it.

My exit has been FreeCAD with an MCP-bridge, letting me talk to an agent that implements my requests directly in the FreeCAD file I have open. Works super well with FreeCAD which has all the features I need, but where they can be hard to discover.

It's interesting, I have an interest in wood working, for a long time the defacto application for planning the majority of woodworking project was SketchUp. I can't say the last time I remember someone discussing it, probably because they are all using knock-off old versions and don't want to mention it.

It's one of the only software's I've felt genuinely zero remorse about pirating after purchasing a perpetual license and having them pull it out after. Adding to that the 3d warehouse forced backward-incompatibility on objects that you can trivially just open and export to an older version with zero differences to get it to work in most cases.

I sometimes wonder what would've happened to SketchUp if google hadn't sold it.

> I'm still peeved about the direction Trimble took

There is a name for it: "enshitification" is the strategy of maximizing short term gains, even if that results in product suicide on the long run.

> Seeing this now, I was wondering how hard would it be to recreate that project with its own full CAD from KetchUp...

Would be worth trying with AI to help you develop it. Probably not too hard if you could spend a few weekends on it.

I have several personal tools I’ve built and maintained.

It’s always more work than it looks. You can get to mostly usable tools quickly if your request isn’t too difficult, but every time I use them I run into another thing that needs to be fixed, changed, clarified, or cleaned up.

It’s fun at first, but over time you realize you’re spending more time building the tools than using the tools to build the thing you originally wanted to work on.

I think personal software is best for highly specific tools or for things you need to use repeatedly for a very long time.

For something like a SketchUp competitor, I wouldn’t want to try to maintain my own. The number of edge cases and features is bigger than you imagine up front, and the vibecoded version that might appear a few hours after your prompt is going to be very far from the version you want to use.

My experience is it's short to get a working tool and long to finish. Many 3D modulers (blender for example) have literally 1000s of features. Yes, you might not need all of them but you probably need 100s, each with quirks and UI/UX decisions. Just iterating on camera controls can take days. You get an orbit camera working via a prompt. But then find it only zooms in/out so far because the LLM decided that was ideal. So you prompt to fix that. Then you find moving the camera is not zoom aware so it moves in meters per frame and when you're zoomed in things move too faster. So you prompt to fix that. Repeat 10000x. Every feature, extrude, bevel, chamfer, subdivide, select vertices, select faces, select edges, etc etc all require this handholding and finese.

At least that's my experience.

Small tools with few features is great. a 3D modeler is not that.

I really appreciate this sentiment, and at the same time there are real opportunity costs to building and maintaining your own tools. Even in the era of tokens.

I think it comes down to where you want to spend your time and attention.

https://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html

I also have my own tool. I vibed a browser-based OpenSCAD harness. It’s a simple SPA with a chat loop. It stores everything in the user’s browser and requires the users to bring their own tokens (URL with API Key or OpenRouter with PKCE)

I host it here: https://vibe3d.spoerri.dev - my partner enjoys it because she can bring an idea to print pretty fast.

Maybe a similar idea could be interesting for KetchUp as well.

Typically what takes time isn't learning a shortcut here or there, rather it's to understand how a proficient user thinks and THUS why the tool work in a "weird" way for newcomers. It's easy to click and paint, why would pro user layers? It's so complicated... then you watch how pro do it, and it's because behind the complicated steps comes a lot of power.

I have no doubt as a newcomer you can make software that will do what you want, but most likely the outcome will no be good, not because of yourself or the tool, but rather because the expertise to map the problem space to the solution space is not trivial, and that's precisely what requires a new way to think, and thus tools that aren't so easy to learn. It's not poor UX.

"So many times I’ve had to spend hours learning a software, reading docs, doing tutorials, only to later be able to do a small basic idea of what I actually wanted to do in the first place

Now I can just build only the software I need, for the thing I need it for"

Or another way to put it for devs “A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.” ― Alan J. Perlis

I think that could be true once you're experienced enough to know what you want.

Before that, though, I think you have to learn what the experts do and what can be done and what you should want. And then you can start to make your own opinions.

By then, unless the major players have done it really wrong, you're not going to make something better than what already exists.

Right now, it's different, because we have that experience prior to the ability to just wish up an app and have it happen.

I literally just had Claude build a 3D modeler slice of Blender that I wanted but that also works in VR [video: (https://www.reddit.com/r/aigamedev/s/q5Y6cskYb9)]

I think the value of adapting full tools to your own workflow far outweighs the maintenance costs nowadays. The tool above for instance took my agent a couple hours and it was good to go. It wasn’t a small slice by any means either: it supports edit/obj mode, extrude, loop cuts, modifiers like subdiv, save/load, undo/redo, bones, auto rig, posing, and more.

Mind you, this is a slice of an open source tool which was still outside of what I wanted from it. Cost wasn’t even part of the equation here.

> At the same time I wonder if we are entering an era in which it’s just better to build your own tools

I wonder if Claude Code and other similar tools start to maintain their own base apps that everyone keeps asking for? This would be like a "cache" that makes the requests cheaper/easier to deliver?

Then everyone's "own" apps is really just a customization layer on top of a solid base that already does all the heavy lifting.

So many people are building their own versions of:

- PDF editors

- Word processors

- 3D editors

- Video editors

- Pixel-based image editors

- Vector-based image editors

- CAD editors

etc.

In some of these there are a few flavors as well that are major architectural choices. But most of what people are doing is just playing around with UI and file formats. Much of the functionality is generally the same.

> I wonder if we are entering an era in which it’s just better to build your own tools

Not necessarily. But only if what you need is not available in open source or not achievable by forking open source. Otherwise it’s a waste of money (token) and attention. This is a significantly smaller pool that “build [all] your own tools”.

Although, AI mega corpos would love if we do constantly re-build everything. You can tell by the tendency of the agents to write everything from scratch instead of importing the code that does the same thing or better.

With strong building blocks, perhaps. But I don’t want to maintain millions of lines of AI generated CAD kernel (or pay the token and wait time). I’m also happy not having to make design choices in that space considering I have 0 experience with it. It’s still a liability.

I've been using SolidCraft with MCP and Codex to model things. Pretty wild. I gave it a photo of a pencil sketch and a paragraph; a few minutes later I had a 3D model. https://solidcraft.io/mcp/

This was only possible because a well thought out, working example could be used as reinforcement learning for the LLM to benchmark it's own development against and improve its output. Had this not already exists in it's current form, I doubt the LLM could have built this on its own.

So, I guess yes, if there is someone's hard work you can copy and steal and make your own, I guess that's true. But try to create something that no one has ever built yet.

I have always been skeptical of the reality of this, especially for businesses. But then one person on our CSM team spent a week building an alternative to Gainsight, saving the company like $90k a year. Granted, it required a technical person to do it even with vibe coding, but it doesn’t take much of his time to maintain it.

Yes, see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50406927

For an example. Lots of people are now vibe coding their tools.

Looking at CRM tools these days and they are so complicated that I’m thinking of just using my tool and add features as I need them.

Would love to hear advice from people who use CRM tools on the job.

Better as in you'll be happier with the end product after a dozen iterations and two dozen small tweaks? Sure.

I think people underestimate what a time investment building your own tool that's of at least medium complexity is, though. It might be worth it if it's something you'll use regularly for a long time, but I don't foresee it being the norm. Even assuming no bugs ever or no performance issues ever and all the architectural decisions made were appropriate (pretty far from current reality), merely describing what you want and how it should behave and look like is a long process, and one that isn't all that enjoyable once you go through it once or twice already.

The existing software that has been around for several years and you kinda dislike is probably much more reliable than your own homebrew, too. Doesn't matter in some cases, matters hugely in others. Learning that your custom video gallery organizer just vanished half your family videos probably isn't very enjoyable, but at least it's easy to recognize it happening. Something more abstract like CAD or 3d printing slicer, ehhh...

you can try fabivo, its not for all uses, but i think the ai agent is great.

Skip the 3D modeler and have the agent do the operations directly instead.

A good visualizer might be useful thought! If that part of the work needs to be validated.

Why are people suddenly entirely unwilling to invest effort into their projects...

Wat is the point of personal projects if in the end you learned nothing

Once upon a time, not so long ago, people gained skills by learning about things instead of outsourcing all the hard parts.

By outsourcing the modeling to Claude or whatever, you don't learn how to build 3d models on your own. You've become dependent on the LLMs, and you're trivially replaceable by someone who can build 3d models on their own...because they can also learn to tell Claude to do all the work.

This just sounds so horribly inefficient though i’m sure the makers of LLMs love you.

+1 to the 3D Warehouse. I have used it extensively over the years for trialing furniture; IKEA seems to have most of their models designed to scale there.

Just have Claude generate assets like that with blender or something. It gets you good enough 3d models pretty quick

'duck infringement' -- parse error at first, because I read this like a noun phrase, like 'duck typing': 'if it looks like a duck and behaves like a duck, it is a duck'. It is kinda fitting for infringement, too... :-)

Are you using them? They all seem to be broken and UI (so they can post on HN/twitter) is the only thing that matters.

Seems unlikely that people are going to spend their Claude sub every month maintaining the thing either. They'll move onto the next cheap LLM project and dedicate their tokens to that.

Im sure that's not every project, but Id rather just have something reliable with a reputation. AI clones are killing open source's reputation for me, I just dont trust anything now.

Not to mention how easy it would be to get a malicious PR approved into a public repo who's maintainer relies solely on the competency of a cheap llm.

So, no money for the modeling tool but enough for a range of dewault/milwaukee/makita tools and the raw resources (wood, screws, glue) etc ? :)

If it was crocheting, I would get it, but woodworking is not an inexpensive hobby where the software becomes the top line item.

Classic case of high value to end users but low revenue, because ease of use doesnt bring money.

Gained a huge user base quickly then sold to Google who wanted it apparently to help people toy around in Google earth, then they did little with it and eventually sold to Trimble, mostly a surveying company, who similarly had hopes it would help expand their users and market reach, which it hasnt really its mostly still evades commercial revenues and continues to be used by the same kind of users as originally

Would you be willing to share how you got it to run in wine? I've tried many times with the old 2017 installer I had from back then, and have never had any luck. I've gotten it to run once or twice, but it's never been actually usable. I've kinda given up, so maybe newer versions of wine work better now?

Skill public?

I guess name collisions will become way more common in an era where people slop their own tools. We just don't have enough words on this planet.

Problem existed even before AI, with framework names. Headlines like "Planecrash in Ohio gains 50% in one year", "ShowHN: I use car accident to get new customers", "Made my wife happy with broken arm"

>every time I draw a rectangle it asks me to name the object;

yeah this seems insane. The push/pull also doesn't work the way I expect it to. Sketchups main selling point was how easy it was to use and pick up

I have the same problem with FreeCAD: I really want to uae FreeCAD. But after some weeks or months I cannot even remember simple things like how to add a new object (or hole) to a face of an object.

I've had some good luck with using Claude (Opus 5.5) for making models for 3D printing just by describing the thing I want (with measurements if you've got em) and having it create an OpenSCAD file.

It's also weirdly good at taking an existing STL file of a functional print and writing some python to modify it.

One example was a badge holder that I liked the design of, but only held 2 badges. I wanted 3, plus a slot on the back for a key. Gave it measurements of the key, it grafted a key slot on the back, and added the third badge slot. In typical 3D printing fashion, of course I had to print like 5 iterations of the thing until the sizing of everything actually worked.

> ingetrazo

Also in rustlang, but under GPL3.

Thank you for this link!

wow this is a really well-built application, it even comes with its own MCP server and LLM integrations, nice work.

I appreciate the website telling me that Mac, Windows and Linux is a list with 3 elements.

Just start typing numbers, eg. typing 5 will focus the text input in lower right corner and then you can finish by typing "5m,3.50m" - that will set the sides of the rectangle to specific exact values. Almost all tools support a similar kind of direct numerical input this way..

I run it on Arch

Free-as-in-freedom FSF style implies the natural follow on question to "am I allowed to change it" is "how easy will it be for me to change it"...

PS. I think you might also want to review the comment guidelines on this site... e.g. "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. "

OP here. I will assume you never built anything in Rust. I didn't get the trend too until I started building stuff with it.

ChatGPT: Rust's biggest advantage is that it provides C/C++-level performance with much stronger memory safety guarantees, without requiring a garbage collector.

It matters because if it used Electron, people may say it will use more RAM.

The MIT license could use a Rust rewrite.

> if the AI can't write it right, the AI probably can't fix it

This doesn't match my experience at all. Frontier models are quite good at finding the cause of and fixing bugs, if they have access to the right tooling. LLMs can easily fix bugs that they introduced with the level of detail in the average bug report.

The slop you are talking about is the slop non-developers produce. I have been a developer for the past 20+ years. I know how to scale and stress-test an application. For instance (real data), my slop runs the exact same file at 240 FPS VS 45 on SketchUp.

There are good and bad slops.

noted! I will add this to my list.

yeah, it didn't think much of it until I started seeing a lot of stars on Github.. I think I'll rename it Dovetail3D

Seems to have been renamed to BenchUp now?

Better rename it to “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Cat Soup 3D”

The name also makes no sense anymore. Isn't it obvious that "SketchUp" is itself just a thin pun that references the word "ketchup"? They're just calling it nearly the exact same thing except that now "ketchup" on its own no longer has anything to do with drawing or sketching anything!!

:)

export menu lists stl and obj.

thanks! that means the world to me! :)

They seem to have renamed it to BenchUp. Not sure whether that would be sufficient.

It's not even a pun! The original name was barely a pun at all... this just the original name with any semblance of pun removed! Agh!

Pretty much all software is built using LLMs. That's a rather harsh filter.

There is an import option for .skp, at least.

hew3d does apparently