u/FlatCarrot3943

I’ve been building SketchForge Circuits, an open-source PCB editor that runs completely in the browser.

The idea came from a problem I kept noticing: PCB tools are incredibly powerful, but they can feel brutal when you are designing your first board.

So I wanted to try the opposite approach.

Place components visually. Connect them. Arrange your PCB. Inspect it in 3D. Keep the interface focused on what you are actually building instead of throwing every professional feature at you from the first minute.

The goal is not to replace KiCad.

The goal is to create something closer to Tinkercad for PCB design, especially for beginners, students, hobbyists, and makers who just want to start building.

It is still an early prototype. There are missing features, rough edges, and plenty of things I probably got wrong.

That is actually why I’m posting it now.

I’d love feedback on the workflow, UI, and especially this question:

What would SketchForge Circuits need before you would actually use it for a real project?

Try it:
https://pcb.sketchforge3d.com/

GitHub:
https://github.com/Formsmith746/SketchForge-PCB

I’ve created GrugDone, a small open-source Agent Skill for Claude Code to ask the agent to keep exposed reasoning traces compact without trying to shorten the final answer on purpose.

I originally made it because agents tend to repeat the prompt, narrate obvious decisions, and repeat information before acting.

Benchmarking on Claude is not done by me. A preliminary run of 20 prompts with GLM-5.2 showed a 32.1% decrease in exposed reasoning words with GrugDone. This was one exploratory run and not proof of token savings, latency reduction, or maintained answer quality.

I’m looking for Claude Code users to test:

• how reliably the skill activates;
• whether it affects reasoning verbosity at all;
• whether it enhances or harms answer quality.

https://preview.redd.it/o1rhcrzcaceh1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a2b0ae50a67bdecbcf42d07b4d4a88cad82827b

I’m building SketchForge, a free and open-source browser-based 3D modelling tool aimed at people who have outgrown Tinkercad but do not want to jump straight into Fusion 360 or SolidWorks.

It runs directly in the browser without an account, but it can also be self-hosted locally with Docker, something I think could be especially useful for makerspaces, schools and shared workshops that want to keep projects on their own network.

Current features include fillets, chamfers, sketches and extrusion, boolean operations, measurements, editable project files, and STL/OBJ/STEP support.

I’m considering improving the makerspace experience with things like shared project libraries, tutorial files, challenges, local user management and easier classroom deployment.

For those who run or use a makerspace: what would a tool like this need before you would seriously consider deploying it?

https://preview.redd.it/nfhui4q2s18h1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=33be3db4a6e2b9c492bc8b0c604eba4d535d08b8

SketchForge is a browser-based 3D editor — primitives, boolean cuts (mark a shape as a hole, group it), STL import/export. The Three.js side is plain Three.js, not react-three-fiber bacause I wanted direct control over geometry disposal since shapes get added/removed/booleaned constantly and a declarative layer on top made memory management harder to reason about. CSG runs through Manifold-3D compiled to WASM, with three-bvh-csg as the bridge into Three.js geometries. Manifold does the actual boolean math, same library OpenSCAD switched to in 2024 for the same reason, fast enough to run interactively instead of as a render step.

Added Vitest for unit tests and a separate perf suite once the main editor file got big, plus CI on every push. Still two large files for the editor and viewport, slowly extracting pieces into smaller modules.

Demo: https://sketchforge-3d.vercel.app

GitHub: https://github.com/Formsmith746/SketchForge-3D

Curious if anyone here has dealt with disposing Three.js geometries and materials at scale without R3F handling it for you — that's been trickier than the CSG itself.

Tinkercad is owned by Autodesk, ties into your Autodesk ID, and stores everything in their cloud. Wanted something that didn't require any of that, so I built SketchForge.

No login, no cloud, no Autodesk account. Drop primitives, mark shapes as holes, group into cut geometry, import STL, export STL/OBJ. Everything saves locally in your browser.

Demo: https://sketchforge-3d.vercel.app

GitHub: https://github.com/Formsmith746/SketchForge-3D

Built solo, mostly with Codex, over about a month. Still alpha — no fillets/chamfers yet,primitives only for now. MIT licensed, free forever.

https://preview.redd.it/pkxcwkklqs7h1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=741927dbe1d316a0d54294067c11cdbfea296eed

Not trying to replace the script-first workflow this sub is built around — just sharing something adjacent that some of you might find interesting or find holes in (pun intended).

SketchForge is a browser-based GUI editor built on Manifold-3D for boolean CSG. Conceptually it's the same primitives you'd script in OpenSCAD (cube, cylinder, sphere, etc.) but placed and transformed directly in a 3D viewport. Marking a shape as a "hole" and grouping it is functionally a difference() operation; regular grouping is union().

No scripting, no parametric history, no .scad file — which is obviously a tradeoff, not a feature. It's aimed at fast, throwaway parts rather than reproducible parametric designs.

Demo: https://sketchforge-3d.vercel.app

GitHub: https://github.com/Formsmith746/SketchForge-3D

Stack: Next.js, Three.js, Manifold-3D (manifold-3d npm package) for the

actual boolean math, three-bvh-csg as glue.

Genuinely curious whether a GUI layer over Manifold has any appeal to people who think in code, or if this solves a problem nobody here actually has. Either answer is useful to me.