Idō — A Universal Harness for 3D Design

Most 3D tools were never built for prompts. Blender wants meshes. OpenSCAD wants code. CAD tools want precision. But users just want to describe an idea and build it.

That inspired idō: a universal harness that turns natural language into 3D design actions.

$$ \text{Prompt} \rightarrow \text{Engineering IR} \rightarrow \text{Adapter} \rightarrow \text{3D Output} $$

With idō, a user can say:

“Make a cozy bedroom” “Add two mounting holes” “Export this as a CAD part”

idō converts the request into Engineering IR, a validated design layer that different tools can understand. Blender gets editable objects in the viewport. OpenSCAD gets a watched .scad file and real exports.

We built the system local-first: the API runs on your machine, and project files stay yours. The same stack can also deploy through Render with a web panel and Blender add-on.

Our biggest challenge was making one prompt work across tools that think completely differently. Blender is visual. OpenSCAD is code-based. idō sits between them with one shared validation layer.

We learned that prompt-based 3D is not just generation — it is translation.

$$ \text{One Prompt Surface} + \text{One Validation Layer} = \text{Many Ways to Build} $$

idō does not replace Blender or OpenSCAD.

It connects them.

That is the bet: 3D design deserves a harness, not another silo.