YHK - yet another hacker news clone

KetchUp – Open-source SketchUp alternative built with Rust and WebGPU

125 points dcoulmbe 2 hours ago 22 comments

xlayn 1 hour ago | parent

That name is really close to ask to be sued... remember the Mikerowsoft vs Microsoft.

QuantumNomad_ 1 hour ago | parent

Better rename it to “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Cat Soup 3D”

yboris 1 hour ago | parent

Great work!

Feedback: every time I draw a rectangle it asks me to name the object; seems like the wrong default behavior.

pippy360 1 hour ago | parent

>every time I draw a rectangle it asks me to name the object;

yeah this seems insane. The push/pull also doesn't work the way I expect it to. Sketchups main selling point was how easy it was to use and pick up

elxr 1 hour ago | parent

Tell your agent to add some showcases of the features on the landing page.

Impressive how good that rust UI feels in a browser though. Even the text rendering is impressive. Maybe rust really is the future of cross platform web+mobile apps.

tannhaeuser 48 minutes ago | parent

See also https://ingetrazo.com/en/ as an alternative vibecoded SketchUp clone.

4ff618 39 minutes ago | parent

Thank you for this link!

trevvr 48 minutes ago | parent

You spelled length wrong

4ff618 45 minutes ago | parent

I love it. I do 3D printing as a hobby, but I really dislike the design phase. I usually need simple shapes: boxes or enclosures for electronics. I can find most of what I need on Thingiverse and similar platforms, but there’s always that 20% of things I need to design myself to adapt them to my specific needs.

SketchUp 8 was the easiest software for me to learn, and it just clicks with me. I really wanted to learn FreeCAD, but there's something about the way it works that I just can't get along with, so I keep going back to SketchUp.

Later, I tried all the alternatives: Onshape, Fusion, Tinkercad, and the new SolidCraft, but SketchUp still feels so simple and intuitive to me.

I've had better luck with OpenSCAD for simple things, and I still need to try it out with LLMs. That's on my TODO list!

opan 43 minutes ago | parent

I like the idea and the name from the title, but if this is using LLMs, I'm not interested... Good luck to you anyway, I'm sure there's an audience for this. Used to know a guy who used SketchUp quite a bit. He modeled his basement living room with its weird overhangs and then a U desk to fit exactly into a corner by the stairs, then built the desk. I think he had no prior CAD experience.

charcircuit 41 minutes ago | parent

Pretty much all software is built using LLMs. That's a rather harsh filter.

mapontosevenths 29 minutes ago | parent

It's pretty easy to avoid. You just don't use anything Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta, Adobe, ServiceNow, Mozilla, Linux, etc.

There are literally at least 5 softwares you can still use... As long as you stick to BeOS.

charcircuit 40 minutes ago | parent

A pun doesn't make a name not trademark infringement.

janice1999 35 minutes ago | parent

It would benefit from curated examples in the File menu to demonstrate the features and give first time users something to interact with.

nico 27 minutes ago | parent

This is awesome. At the same time I wonder if we are entering an era in which it’s just better to build your own tools

Need a 3D modeler? Use Claude or codex to build the 3D model first, then build the modeler around it as you iterate towards what you want to build

So many times I’ve had to spend hours learning a software, reading docs, doing tutorials, only to later be able to do a small basic idea of what I actually wanted to do in the first place

Now I can just build only the software I need, for the thing I need it for (or, ala REA, maybe either modify or reverse engineer some existing software, to better fit my workflows)

In that sense, it would also be cool to be able to drive KetchUp with an agent. I’m a big fan of what pen.dev has done (although now their tool is not free/open anymore)

heyzk 18 minutes ago | parent

I really appreciate this sentiment, and at the same time there are real opportunity costs to building and maintaining your own tools. Even in the era of tokens.

I think it comes down to where you want to spend your time and attention.

https://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html

0xb0565e486 15 minutes ago | parent

Skip the 3D modeler and have the agent do the operations directly instead.

A good visualizer might be useful thought! If that part of the work needs to be validated.

bhouston 11 minutes ago | parent

> At the same time I wonder if we are entering an era in which it’s just better to build your own tools

I wonder if Claude Code and other similar tools start to maintain their own base apps that everyone keeps asking for? This would be like a "cache" that makes the requests cheaper/easier to deliver?

Then everyone's "own" apps is really just a customization layer on top of a solid base that already does all the heavy lifting.

So many people are building their own versions of:

- PDF editors

- Word processors

- 3D editors

- Video editors

- Pixel-based image editors

- Vector-based image editors

- CAD editors

etc.

In some of these there are a few flavors as well that are major architectural choices. But most of what people are doing is just playing around with UI and file formats. Much of the functionality is generally the same.

guhidalg 8 minutes ago | parent

Sigh... are we really just going to re-invent plugins?

dofm 20 minutes ago | parent

Is OBJ a viable form of geometry export here? Not clear what else it can export.

m1keil 10 minutes ago | parent

Is KetchUp free? Yes. KetchUp is open source under the MIT license and written in Rust.

Omg why is rust relevant to the question whether this is free or not.

shaunpud 6 minutes ago | parent

I run it on Arch