Fusion with Claude MCP to create difficult shapes

[Marquinius]

Caveat: I have a paid subscription on Claude and Fusion, so I am not sure if this works on free tiers. But it should, as the hard work is done locally. And I am pretty sure there will be similar connectors between e.g. FreeCad.

I installed the connector between Claude and Autodesk ai to see if that would help with creating difficult shapes. And it does. I simply described a canoe with some specs (LxWxH plus where the put the width and that I wanted a slight curve off Xmm. No fancy stuff and certainly not a realistic canoe, but good enough to see if this works. Two iterations and 15 minutes work and I had what I expected. To note: I will see what happens when I inject real cross sections, stations and whatnot to create e.g. a destroyer hull. But for a first test and after 15 minutes, I am surprised.

The design is fully configurable, just like I had had created it myself.

 

[Rob444]

Impressive work!

 

[Marquinius]

Impressive work!

Biggest challenge is describing what you want. This was a free shape test and even that required a few iterations. Not because the system couldn’t create it, but because my prompt was vague.

I think that the best trick is to first describe the general plan, e.g. “We are going to design a Canadian canoe that can hold three people. Scale is 1/:20. Goal is to end with a 3D printable design with machine XYZ with specs ABC’.

 

[Marquinius]

OK, I did another test, now with a plan as we normally use. It took three iterations to get it right, mostly around the bow. And it is still not 100% to my liking, but with what Claude did in Fusion, I can now bend and loft with the existing lines, instead of having to create each one by hand.
This is still a pretty simple hull. A more complex one will need some thinking about how to cut it to two or three parts. For instance when designing a Spanish Galeon, I would create the bottom part of the hull and then the castles. If you try that in one go, things will go pear shaped. And in this test I would have used less ribs, as the rule is to use as little as possible. But overall a pretty interesting tool. It takes away a lot of pain and frustration regarding the standing ribs connecting to the horizontal guide lines.

For the nerds: this was the prompt I started with, which resulted in a 95% correct hull. It is as simple as that. The iterations were simple prompts: 'delete section XYZ and reloft' and such commands.

Prompt:
Use the Fusion connector to create a boat hull of a Vosper Motor Torpedo Boat.
Attached find the line plan for this boat. I only want the hull. Do not design or create anything else.
The Fusion design must be 1000mm long. Derive all other measurements from the drawing. Use 3mm for hull thickness.

 

[rshousha]

This is really amazing work. I just paid my annual subscription for my SolidWorks license and I really wonder what I am getting. During the past year, I had four difficulties and was able to resolve them with AI in minutes, while the VAR took a few days just to acknowledge my request.

So, during the past year, I have been using AI more and more to solve my SolidWorks issues and my designs are getting better, and I am drawing them faster and faster.

However, I have not yet tried to create a hull like you have done, using an AI tool. This is really great stuff. I will see if this will work with SolidWorks itself.

 

[KevinW]

The most impressive and useful thing here, from my perspective, is how fair the lines are. I’m not at all familiar with these connectors but will certainly be having a look tomorrow, as I’ll need to fair my Soleil Royal quite shortly.