Type a shape. Cut it.

The 15-second version

Click the purple ✨ AI button in the top bar of the tool. Type something like NACA2412 to NACA0009 morph 600mm. Hit Generate. The shape appears in the workspace, ready to scale, position and stream to your machine. The whole round-trip takes about a second and works without an internet connection to a third-party LLM — the math runs on our own server.

What it can make today

1. NACA 4-digit aerofoils

The classic recipe for RC plane wings. NACA 4-digit codes encode camber, camber-position and thickness in four numbers (e.g. NACA2412 = 2% camber at 40% chord, 12% thickness). The generator computes the upper and lower surfaces from the official NACA polynomial — same math NASA published in 1933, still the workhorse for hobby aerofoils.

Try:

• NACA2412 wing 200mm chord 600mm span — straight extruded wing
• NACA0012 wing 300mm chord 800mm span — symmetric (no camber)
• NACA6409 wing 180mm chord 400mm span — high-camber slow flyer

2. NACA morph wings (the killer feature)

This is the one your friends will share. Tell it two NACA codes and a span; the tool builds a real 4-axis ruled-surface cut that smoothly interpolates between the two profiles along the wing's length. That's a tapered, root-to-tip-changing aerofoil — the kind of thing that used to need CAD software or hand-cut templates.

• NACA2412 to NACA0009 morph 600mm — fat root → thin tip
• NACA4412 to NACA2412 morph 500mm — high-camber root, mid-camber tip
• NACA0018 to NACA0006 morph 700mm — symmetric morphing thickness

3. Square-to-round ducts (and round-to-square)

HVAC, dust collection, intake mouldings. Two cross-sections, smoothly lofted between them by the wire. Type a square size, a round diameter, and a length:

• square 200mm to round 100mm duct 400mm length
• square 300mm to round 120mm transition 500mm

The square gets densified to 128 points so the morph aligns cleanly with the circle — no nasty corner kinks.

4. Columns (straight or twisted)

• column 200mm diameter 600mm height — straight cylinder
• twisted column 200mm diameter 800mm height — barber-pole, 60° twist between profiles
• pillar 150mm diameter 1000mm tall — same thing, different word

5. Stars

Decorations, signage backers, prop dressing. The outer-to-inner radius ratio is fixed at 0.4 (looks balanced for 3–24 points).

• 5-point star 200mm 400mm height
• 8-point star 150mm 300mm height
• 12-prong star 300mm 600mm tall

6. Ellipses

For nose cones, fuselage cross-sections, decorative ovals.

• ellipse 200x100 mm 500mm length
• oval 150x80 mm 400mm length

How it actually works (under the hood)

There's no large language model behind this in the current version. The server runs a small set of procedural generators — hand-written code that knows the math for each shape family. When you type a prompt:

1. Lowercase it. Strip whitespace.
2. Run each parser in turn. The first one that matches wins.
3. The matching parser extracts numbers (chord, span, diameter etc.) using regex, generates two profile contours (left tower + right tower), and a span length.
4. The result is handed to the same generateMorph() function that powers the regular "Two-part morph" mode in Load parts. That builds the G-code; the tool loads it; you see the cut materialise.

Because the math is local and deterministic:

• It's instant — typically <100 ms server-side.
• It's repeatable — same prompt → same shape, every time.
• It works offline for us — no third-party API key, no recurring cost, no rate-limit imposed by anyone else.
• It can't make things outside the recipe set — for now. (More below.)

Limits + what to expect

If it says "I don't know how to make that yet"

The parser didn't match any recipe. The error message lists the prompts we DO understand — pick one of the patterns from above and adapt the numbers. If you want a shape we don't support yet, drop it in the helpdesk under "AI helper" and we'll consider adding it to the recipe list.

Numbers matter, words matter less

"200 mm chord", "200mm chord", "chord 200mm", "chord=200" — all work. But "about 8 inches" doesn't (no inch support yet; everything is millimetres).

Defaults if you skip a number

Most generators have sensible defaults so you can be lazy. Just NACA2412 wing with no sizes gives you a 200 mm chord × 600 mm span — typical glider mid-section.

Rate limits

30 generations per 10 minutes per IP. If you hit the wall, wait. (This is to keep the bill at zero if the page ever gets shared widely.)

It always builds a morph cut

Even for shapes where left and right profiles are identical (like a straight cylinder or wing), the generator outputs a "morph" — it's just that the two profiles happen to be the same. This keeps the rendering + G-code path consistent and lets you tweak afterwards via the OBJECT bar.

What you can do with the output

An AI-generated shape behaves exactly like any other loaded part:

• Scale it using the SCALE X/Y/U/V inputs (try the new % ↔ mm toggle to type real dimensions).
• Position it within the material block using the OFFSET FROM 0,0 fields.
• Rotate one face (4-axis morph only) via the ROTATE UV input.
• Download the G-code directly with the ↓ G-code button.
• Stream to USB-Serial or Wi-Fi the same way you would any other cut.
• Publish to the shape library via the 📤 Publish button. Other users can then Load, Remix or Fork it.

Coming next

Roadmap items, roughly in priority order:

• LLM fallback. When the procedural parser can't match, hand the prompt to a large language model (Claude or GPT) and ask for a structured profile back. That unlocks arbitrary shapes ("a viking helmet", "a hot-rod fender") at the cost of a small per-request fee and a couple of seconds latency.
• More recipes. Spirals, scrolls, fish silhouettes, Greek columns with proper fluting, letter shapes, prop fairings, naca 5-digit, NACA 6-series.
• Multi-language prompts. EN / NL / DE / FR / ES so non-English makers don't need to translate first.
• AI badge on published shapes. So the gallery can show "✨ AI-generated" alongside community uploads, and the original prompt is searchable / re-runnable.
• Iterative refinement. "Make it 20% taller", "narrow the tip", "add a 30° twist" — chat-style follow-ups that morph the current shape.

Questions, requests, weird results?

Hit the helpdesk's AI helper category — there's a growing collection of common questions and gotchas. If yours isn't there, post it. We read every one.