Metalink

Inspiration

The inspiration for Metalink came from witnessing the friction between design ideation and technical implementation in manufacturing. Engineers and designers often struggle with a gap: they can visualise what they need, but translating that vision into production-ready CAD drawings requires specialised CAD software expertise and deep knowledge of manufacturing standards like AISC 360 and AWS D1.1.

What it does

Metalink is an AI-powered CAD generation and manufacturing platform that transforms natural language descriptions into production-ready technical drawings. Users can describe a component in plain English (like "6x4 inch steel bracket, 1/4 inch thick, with 4 mounting holes"), and Metalink generates a complete STEP file with an interactive 3D preview.

How we built it

We built Metalink using a modern, serverless tech stack optimized for real-time performance: CAD Generation: Zoo Dev's KittyCAD API converts natural language to STEP files, supporting multiple formats (STEP, STL, OBJ, GLTF, GLB).

Frontend: Next.js 16 with React 19 and TypeScript provides the foundation, with Tailwind CSS 4 for beautiful glass-morphism UI effects. We used React Three Fiber and Three.js for interactive 3D CAD previews, and OpenCascade.js for parsing STEP files in the browser.

Backend: Convex powers our serverless architecture, handling database operations, file storage, and real-time updates. We implemented custom authentication, action handlers for AI operations, and a comprehensive schema for products, drawings, and user data.

Challenges we ran into

STEP File Parsing: Parsing complex STEP files in the browser was incredibly challenging. STEP is a verbose, archaic format, and extracting meaningful geometry (dimensions, holes, edges) required diving deep into OpenCascade.js's complex API and handling edge cases where geometry wasn't cleanly represented.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

End-to-End AI Pipeline: Successfully integrated Claude AI, and our compliance engine into a seamless workflow that takes text and outputs compliant, manufacturable CAD files

What's next for Metalink

Standards Are Complex: Manufacturing standards like AISC 360 have nuanced conditional logic that's challenging to encode programmatically. Simplifying for users while maintaining accuracy was a delicate balance.

3D on the Web: Browser-based 3D rendering is powerful but requires careful optimization. We learned WebGL best practices, geometry simplification techniques, and memory management strategies.