Integrating A.I. into design process

Special Interest Areas AI
86

A few people here have mentioned AI being useful for early iteration, but also raised the issue that the output is still just pixels, and that designers may lose control over shape or become dependent on the tool.

That gets at the question I’m most curious about:

How do people here see the balance between controlled 3D rendering and AI image generation evolving?

For some parts of the process, a generated image may be enough. Mood, styling, context, getting unstuck, quick form exploration. But in many industrial design workflows, especially once a product is moving toward CAD, CMF, stakeholder review, or launch assets, the visuals need to stay connected to the actual object: geometry, scale, materials, lighting, variants, and decisions that can be repeated or revised.

Do you see AI staying mostly in the early concept, sketch render, and moodboard stage?

Or do you think the more useful direction is AI inside the 3D workflow, helping with scene setup, materials, lighting, cameras, variants, presentation boards, and output management, while the designer keeps control over the actual product and visual decisions?

Full disclosure, I’m trying to build such a tool, combining the best of 3D and AI. The thing I’m especially interested in is agents that can help add functionality or operate parts of the workflow for you, right when you need it. I’m actively trying to understand whether this is moving in a useful direction or if designers see it differently.

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87

It might be useful and instructive to have some portion of a rendering process provide examples of environments or light setups “do you want it like this, or more like this?” And then actually creating the lights in the right places and get out of the way. In this manner a designer could learn and not become dependent or uninvolved, so they can still know how to physically light their model in some future after AI gets outlawed or eats everything.

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88

I’m for AI rendering as a structured tool. I am a control freak over the last 5% of a render. The tools are very impressive now for building a render out of something.

It is also important to me, like slippyfish indicates to not erode my skills. I want to feel active in the process and get something extra out. Something that benefits the iteration and the communication, not the confident gloss and context seduction that is so easily applied.

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89

Recently I’ve been doing some CAD AI consulting work with a few LLM companies. One of the companies approaches training algorithms by generating prompts and rubrics that then utilize platforms like: Fusion 360, Rhino3D, and Autocad Inventor, LibreCAD and others to generate data models.

Part of the state of the art in AI 3D CAD development is: recording designers doing tasks at intervals and then feeding those recordings to an LLM to crunch with, recalling specific workflows when given new prompts and sets of rubrics to find solutions to design problems.

The methodology records how designers use current software platforms (their work flows and tool usage) to generate 3D designs, and then will try and reproduce new designs when given new prompts and rubrics.

This approach is still in the alpha “Weird Science” phase of development. You can see the parallels with what science fiction has laid out before. For now everything is derivative from something else in order to make progress and I don’t see any attempts at originality, yet.

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90

Sam Altman hasn’t called me yet with an offer to record me while doing SolidWorks. I’d break the LLM with how much Move Face I use.

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91

Moving faces in Solidworks provides better insights for the LLM than say, nudging NURBS around in 3D space.

It’s the “non-rational” stuff that these LLMs do not know what to do with. Design is messy, and that is where they halt their value. For now.

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92

AI swallowing the poison pill of SolidWorks workflow might be the saving grace of industrial design.

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93

Anyone getting requests to “CAD up” somebody else’s AI concept from the outside (marketing, engineering, sales)?