Free Vibe-Coded Shed Design Tool - For Visualizing Dimensions and Rough Planning Cuts and Lumber Purchases
Top-line disclosure: this tool was coded entirely using AI - though the post is written by me, a human.
Code is here: https://github.com/BMXop19/Timber-Framer
The tool is to be used however anyone wishes: Build with it, sell it, I do not care. Just don't hurt yourself and blame me. I would personally love to see if this could serve as a basis for something that someone with actual talent can make.
I have mixed feelings about this tool - in the comments of the first post, one person mentioned BuildFreely, and after having blindly sunk 10+ hours into this project, I looked into BuildFreely and learned that I was using AI to make something that not only already exists, but was actually designed by a human being with framing and computer science knowledge far greater than my own.
I am not a builder and I am not a coder - I guarantee there will be (possibly serious) errors in this app's framing decisions and I really was rushing to push this out so I didn't test all possibilities to see what options may break it. Code compliance was not a major consideration when making this tool - I essentially made it to build my own backyard shed and thought others may find it helpful.
Definitely go check out BuildFreely for a much better version of most of what I did here. Instead of being duplicative, I tried to add a new feature - multi-rectangle roofs. As you can see in the first few images, there are two rooms of different sizes sharing a wall. Based on the eye test and a lot of tweaking, it appears that the system can generate a solid mono-pitch roof over a multi-rectangle shed.
Some limitations:
- I wasn't able to get the California corners working correctly so I can only really attest to the functionality of the 3-stud corners.
- I did not test this with very large buildings or very extreme dimensions (large roof overhangs, crazy slopes, super wide & long spans, etc. If you want to build something like that, I wouldn't trust this tool with the weight anyway.
- Not sure if this bug persists, but at one point, you needed to add at least one door to an enclosed set of 4 walls before the system will generate a roof.
I plan to continue working on this and the github repo should contain my additional versions.
Like I said, I have mixed feelings on the whole AI aspect of this all. I hate the idea of displacing talented software developers, but I also think that these tools have the potential to displace CAD companies like OnShape, SolidWorks, etc. who price their licenses at rates that are exorbitantly expensive to the average person. Overall, I made this tool for my own use and am sharing it because I found it cool.
[Reposted because I forgot the images initially]