AMSYMLINE: Symmetrical Line Automation — Community Preview
We've been exploring AI-assisted drawing workflows, and one area that came up repeatedly in conversations with mechanical and tool designers is symmetrical centerline creation. We've built an experimental version that automates this.
We'd like to get your opinion before we decide how to ship it.
Getting It Running
We created a package for you to check and provide us with feedback:
The tool provides two commands:
AMSYMLINE - Click an existing centerline to reference it or click elsewhere to draw a new one. Then draw the polyline where you want the symmetrical lines to appear. Press Enter to end the command.
AMCENTLINE - Draws a centerline on layer AM_7 between two points.
We'd Like to Hear Your Thoughts
Before we decide whether to ship this in the product or keep it as a companion .NET tool, we have some open questions:
- Would you use AMSYMLINE? Even occasionally?
- Is it useful? Does it save time for your workflows?
- Does it cover your needs? What geometry types do you usually work with?
- Is anything missing? (E.g., batch mode? Different axis definitions? Additional layer options?)
- What doesn't work? Please share edge cases or failures.
- Product vs. .NET? If this shipped as part of BricsCAD (not a separate app), would you use it more often?
- Do you want more? (E.g., related symmetry automation commands?)
Thanks for trying it out.
— BricsCAD Product Team
Comments
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I am curious to hear the feedback and comments. Looking to try this out myself; will report back afterwards.
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Had a look at movie very smart idea auto mirror etc. I think if start to use it will find more often take advantage of it.
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Having looked at the video only I would definitely want this to be part of BricsCAD, this would make creating symmetrical shapes quite a bit easier/faster. It's useful in other areas than mechanical and tools design as well.
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This looks great. Though there is one thought that always occurs to me when I use A.I. or even any sort of automation in my CAD system. The smarter a computer gets, the more the user has to understand the underlying "thought" process that the programmers have programmed into it. If they don't, then the computer and user will get into fights. And the computer rarely gives up and will fight to the death to defend what it thinks should be done.
That said, the video does seem to portray an A.I. that is behaving nicely, and lets the user make changes. My only suggestion is that you write up the details of the program's logic, so we can understand why something may not work, or behave as we expected. And things like knowing what will break the logic on the items. Can we copy the part, and it maintain its symmetry? Can more than one centerline exist on that layer?, etc.
-Joe
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Good questions, especially about having more than one centreline, that would make creating geometry that is both horizontal and vertical symmetrical a bit easier.
Though I don't think this is AI as "I" of "Intelligence" but more a more a well made symmetry tool that has been available in DTP drawing software for quite a few years.
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