Benchmark: CadQuery vs. OpenSCAD for agentic CAD work
A technical benchmark compared the performance of AI agents using CadQuery and OpenSCAD for automated 3D modeling. The study found that while both tools successfully produced printable parts, they exhibited different failure modes when driven by AI.
Why it matters
As AI agents become more involved in engineering and design, understanding the reliability and failure patterns of CAD toolchains is essential for autonomous manufacturing.
We gave six AI agents the same three printable parts to model, three in CadQuery and three in OpenSCAD, then verified every mesh independently. Both toolchains shipped. The difference is in how they fail.
ModelRift generates OpenSCAD for every model on the platform. That choice is worth re-testing occasionally, so we ran a controlled comparison against the most credible alternative for code-first CAD: CadQuery , a Python library on top of the OpenCascade B-rep kernel.
The question was narrow: which one can an AI agent drive to a correct, printable, functional part with nobody watching? How pleasant each is to write by hand did not come into it.
Six agents, three tasks, two tools. Every resulting STL was then checked by a parser that trusts neither tool.
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