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MAC — Multi-Agent CAD for Parts and Assemblies

Generate editable CAD parts and multi-part assemblies from natural language.

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License: MIT Python 3.11+ Powered by build123d Outputs Assembly export

MAC turns an ordinary design brief into editable engineering geometry. It can generate a single printable part or decompose a mechanism into separately generated components, assemble them, validate the result, and export the artifacts needed for downstream inspection and simulation workflows.

MAC was originally released as a single-part Text-to-CAD workflow and has since received nearly 1,000 GitHub stars. This release preserves that workflow while adding visual verification, an independent Judge, and experimental multi-part assembly generation.

MAC Web UI walkthrough

Assembly Gallery (Technology Preview)

Building on the original single-part workflow, MAC v2 introduces experimental natural-language assembly generation. The examples below are curated outputs, not a measured prompt-success rate, and the assembly workflow is not presented as outperforming CAD-agent skills. Validate generated geometry and joints before manufacturing or simulation use.

Complex assemblies

Three-Axis Gantry Metrology Cell Telescopic Cinema Robot Crane
A bridge-style inspection platform with three orthogonal motion stages. A multi-stage crane with an articulated support and telescopic payload arm.
Three-axis gantry metrology cell Telescopic cinema robot crane
Heavy-Duty Mobile Manipulator Advanced Vision Inspection Robot Arm
A mobile base carrying a visually detailed articulated manipulator. A multi-joint inspection arm with a framed vision payload.
Heavy-duty mobile manipulator Advanced vision inspection robot arm

Complex-gallery generation usage

Assembly Planning & mating Part generation & repair Judge & other workflow Total tokens Estimated cost
Three-Axis Gantry Metrology Cell about 178,000 461,811 260,157 about 900,000 about $2
Telescopic Cinema Robot Crane 535,407 663,427 about 451,000 about 1,650,000 about $3
Heavy-Duty Mobile Manipulator about 520,000 2,678,005 2,602,142 about 5,800,000 about $13
Advanced Vision Inspection Robot Arm 85,016 160,367 about 55,000 about 300,000 about $1

Compact functional assemblies

Hinged Twin-Claw Gripper Guided Linear Plunger Rotary Fork-Key Tool Reusable Five-Digit Hand
Hinged twin-claw gripper Guided linear plunger Rotary fork-key tool Reusable five-digit hand

These curated compact examples exercise natural-language decomposition, joint interfaces, repeated-part reuse, and mirrored geometry. The complex gallery shows how the same workflow scales to larger visual assemblies. See the assembly workflow documentation for implementation details and current limitations.

URDF Simulation

The assembly workflow can export generated mechanisms as URDF files for downstream robotics and physics simulation. The demonstrations below use an AI-generated hand assembly to execute object rotation and pick-and-place tasks in simulation.

Object Rotation Pick and Place
AI-generated hand rotating an object in simulation AI-generated hand performing pick and place in simulation

Part Gallery

MAC also generates standalone mechanical and creative parts. The examples below are editable CAD results, not image-only generations.

Honeycomb Organizer Gyroscope Ornament Lighthouse Smartphone Stand Ball-in-Cage
Honeycomb organizer Gyroscope ornament Lighthouse Smartphone stand Ball-in-cage
Articulable Gyroscope Multi-Link Chain Geneva Mechanism Plasma Reactor Brake Disc
Articulable gyroscope Multi-link chain Geneva mechanism Plasma reactor Brake disc

The single-part workflow documentation covers configuration, execution, caching, and QA. Benchmark prompts and per-model data are linked from its benchmark-details section.

Real-World Results

3D-printed MAC models

The printed collection above includes benchmark parts and original showcase models generated by the single-part workflow. MAC can also produce print-in-place mechanisms containing separate bodies and functional clearances:

Printed articulable MAC models

Single-Part Benchmark

The following numbers apply specifically to the documented ten-prompt, 141-feature single-part-workflow benchmark. They are not assembly success-rate or assembly-cost claims.

Workflow Model In-loop verification Tokens Estimated cost Feature pass rate
CAD Skill reproduction Qwen 3.7 — 103.95M $18.59 138/141 (97.9%)
CAD Skill reproduction Qwen 3.8 Visual 87.46M $29.45 132/141 (93.6%)
MAC v1 Qwen 3.7 Geometric 0.90M $1.43 140/141 (99.3%)
MAC v2 Qwen 3.8 Visual + geometric 1.40M $4.85 140/141 (99.3%)

Under the Qwen 3.7 setup, MAC v1 used 116× fewer recorded tokens and had a 13× lower estimated cost than the reproduced Skill baseline. Under Qwen 3.8 with visual verification, MAC v2 used 62.7× fewer recorded tokens and had a 6.1× lower estimated cost.

MAC v1 refers to the original single-part workflow and its published benchmark run. MAC v2 refers to the updated single-part workflow with visual verification and the independent Judge. Assembly generation is presented separately as a technology preview and is not included in these benchmark figures.

Across the two documented model configurations, MAC retained a 140/141 feature pass rate while using substantially fewer recorded tokens and lower estimated cost than the corresponding reproduced Skill runs.

Methodology and raw breakdowns: single-part README, English evaluation, and Chinese evaluation.

Why MAC?

  • Natural-language input — describe geometry, dimensions, interfaces, and motion without writing CAD code or an internal schema.
  • Parts and assemblies — use one project for standalone printable parts and articulated, multi-component mechanisms.
  • Editable engineering outputs — export STEP, STL, and GLB rather than a render-only result; assemblies also provide a URDF handoff.
  • Auditable generation — inspect structured briefs, geometry plans, generated Python, measurements, QA reports, and repair history.
  • Automatic execution and repair — generated CAD is executed and checked, with bounded feedback loops for recoverable failures.
  • Reuse instead of regeneration — repeated and mirrored components can be derived from one source geometry.
  • Model-flexible stages — configure different OpenAI-compatible models for planning, geometry, coding, and repair.
  • Visual workflow — the single-part pipeline includes a browser UI with 3D preview and downloadable results.
  • Built on a proven workflow — MAC v2 extends the original nearly 1,000-star single-part pipeline with visual verification and assembly generation while retaining the existing part-generation workflow.

Quick Start

Install

git clone https://github.com/Pan-Chera/Multi-Agent-CAD.git
cd Multi-Agent-CAD
conda env create -f environment.yml
conda activate multi_agent_cad
pip install --no-deps "aider-chat==0.82.3"
export DASHSCOPE_API_KEY="your-key"

The final pip install is needed because aider-chat pins NumPy 1.x, which conflicts with build123d's NumPy 2.x requirement. It is therefore omitted from environment.yml; --no-deps avoids replacing the working NumPy version.

The default configuration targets an OpenAI-compatible DashScope endpoint. Other providers are covered in the single-part configuration guide.

pip users (no conda): aider-chat pins numpy==1.26.4, but build123d>=0.8 requires numpy>=2,<3 — these conflict in pure pip. Use this workaround (verified on macOS arm64 + Python 3.11):

python3.11 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate          # Windows PowerShell: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install --upgrade pip
# Install aider first (pulls numpy 1.26.4 + transitive deps), then force-upgrade numpy.
# Verified: aider 0.82.3 imports cleanly on numpy 2.x — the pin is over-cautious upstream.
pip install "aider-chat==0.82.3"
pip install --no-deps --force-reinstall "numpy>=2,<2.3"
pip install "build123d>=0.8" "langgraph>=0.2,<0.3" "langgraph-checkpoint>=2.0,<3.0" \
            "pydantic>=2.5" "openai>=1.20.0" "anthropic>=0.30" \
            "trimesh>=4.0" "rtree>=1.1" "scipy>=1.10" "scikit-learn>=1.3" \
            "fastapi>=0.110" "uvicorn[standard]>=0.27" "ipython>=8.15" "pytest>=7.4"
# --no-deps skips re-checking the numpy pin in pyproject.toml; fastapi+uvicorn
# are already installed by the previous step, so the [web] extras resolve.
pip install --no-deps -e .

The last step registers the mac-config-reset console script and lets you run python -m multi_agent_cad.graph from any directory. See requirements.txt / pyproject.toml for the canonical dependency list.

Windows: the same conda env create + pip install --no-deps aider-chat==0.82.3 flow works — trimesh and rtree come from conda-forge prebuilt; OCP is pulled in transitively by build123d (via its PyPI dep cadquery-ocp-novtk). Don't use the pure-pip workaround below on Windows — native wheels for trimesh/rtree can be unreliable. Set the API key in PowerShell as $env:DASHSCOPE_API_KEY = "sk-..." (or set DASHSCOPE_API_KEY=sk-... in cmd.exe). For the Web UI under conda, pip install -e ".[web]" inside the activated env works — uvloop auto-skips on Windows. Windows isn't in CI, but the code avoids Unix-only APIs and uses UTF-8 throughout; issues welcome.

Generate one part

Set USER_REQUEST in multi_agent_cad/config.py, then run:

python -m multi_agent_cad.graph

For the single-part browser UI:

pip install -e ".[web]"
python -m multi_agent_cad.web

The UI listens on 127.0.0.1 by default. It executes generated Python with your user account's permissions, so do not expose it directly to an untrusted network. Copying results to an arbitrary local directory is disabled unless MAC_WEB_ALLOW_DEST_PATH=1 is explicitly set.

Web UI security and environment variables

State-changing API endpoints (POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) require a custom X-MAC-CSRF: 1 header. The browser frontend sends it automatically; non-browser clients (curl, HTTP libraries) must add it manually or the server returns 403:

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/run \
  -H "X-MAC-CSRF: 1" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"user_request": "a 30 mm cube"}'

GET endpoints (/api/health, /api/jobs, status polling) are unaffected.

The following environment variables control Web UI behavior:

  • MAC_WEB_HOST — bind address. Loopback values (127.0.0.1, localhost, ::1, the default) also enable a loopback Host allowlist as a defense-in-depth CSRF layer. Binding to a non-loopback address (LAN deployment) disables that layer; the X-MAC-CSRF header remains required.
  • MAC_WEB_ALLOW_CUSTOM_ENDPOINT=1 — opt in to non-loopback OpenAI-compatible DS_BASE_URL hosts: vLLM on a private hostname, a corporate gateway, or Ollama / LM Studio on a non-loopback address. Default off; otherwise the host must match the provider allowlist (loopback, api.openai.com, api.deepseek.com, generativelanguage.googleapis.com, .aliyuncs.com, .googleapis.com). Scheme (http/https) is always enforced.
  • MAC_WEB_ALLOW_DEST_PATH=1 — opt in to the dest_path artifact-copy feature. When set, MAC_WEB_DEST_ROOT must also be set to an absolute directory, and each request's dest_path must be relative and resolve under that root. Absolute dest_path and .. traversal are rejected.
  • MAC_CHILD_ENV_ALLOW=VAR1,VAR2 — pass additional non-secret environment variables through to the generated-Python subprocess (for example, HTTP_PROXY,HTTPS_PROXY on a corporate network). The default allowlist is PATH, HOME, TMPDIR, TMP, TEMP, LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, PYTHONPATH, PYTHONIOENCODING, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, plus ITERATION set per child. Never list API keys or credentials here — env-var stripping reduces secret leakage but does not sandbox the subprocess; see SECURITY.md.

Generate an assembly

Assembly input is also ordinary natural language. Run an included request:

MAC_ASSEMBLY_REQUEST="$(cat mac_assembly/assembly_prompts/natural_language_benchmarks/01_hinged_twin_claw_gripper.md)" \
python -m mac_assembly

Or provide a brief directly:

MAC_ASSEMBLY_REQUEST="Create a two-part hinged clamp with a fixed base and one rotating jaw." \
python -m mac_assembly

Assembly jobs are written under assembly_jobs/job_<timestamp>/, including separate-part geometry, assembled STEP/STL/GLB, URDF, manifests, and QA artifacts. See the assembly guide before relying on an output for manufacturing or simulation.

Documentation

Citation

If you find this project useful for your research, please consider citing:

@misc{mac2026,
  author       = {Guanxing Qu and Xueyan Zou},
  title        = {MAC (Multi-Agent CAD): A Decoupled Multi-Agent Framework for Text-to-CAD Generation},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {GitHub},
  journal      = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/Pan-Chera/Multi-Agent-CAD}}
}

The quantitative single-part evaluation uses earthtojake/text-to-cad (CAD Skills) as the comparison baseline. If you cite the benchmark comparison, please also cite that project:

@misc{texttocad2026,
  author       = {earthtojake},
  title        = {CAD Skills: A skills library for CAD, robotics, and hardware design agents},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {GitHub},
  journal      = {GitHub repository},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/earthtojake/text-to-cad}}
}

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

The vendored packages/cadpy STEP/GLB runtime is derived from earthtojake/text-to-cad (CAD Skills) and is redistributed under its original MIT license — see packages/cadpy/LICENSE.

Acknowledgements

  • Tsinghua University, IEI Lab — the lab where this project was developed; provided the research environment and advisor guidance.
  • earthtojake/text-to-cad (CAD Skills) — source of the comparison baseline and the ten shared single-part benchmark prompts. The vendored packages/cadpy runtime also derives from this project and retains its original MIT copyright.
  • build123d — algebraic B-rep CAD kernel.
  • LangGraph — stateful agent orchestration.
  • Aider — LLM-driven code repair.
  • Qwen Model Studio — OpenAI-compatible models used in the documented experiments.

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