I've been dictating designs to Codex with Wispr Flow, then printing the results: holders that fit my speaker, my pegboard and the little meters I want to use. I'd never done CAD modelling before. Now I can describe what I want and get something made to my specification.
Roughly three months ago, I didn't even have a 3D printer. I could have learned CAD, and I still could. But I'm so AI-forward that making these models with AI was the natural route for me. The results are more than good enough for the kinds of modelling I'm trying to do.
Take the Minirig 3 holder. It's an adjustable cradle for my IKEA SKÅDIS board, with a cable channel and actual bolts and nuts holding it together. It's now printed and installed, holding the speaker it was designed around.
The printed Minirig holder installed on my SKÅDIS board.
These are photographs of my real prints, with AI used to clean up the backgrounds.
Being able to modify an existing design is useful too. My Gridfinity resistor organiser is a taller, customisable 6U remix of dmc_faLl's CC0 original. I can start from something that already exists and change it to suit what I need.
The cereal-box filament spool holder goes further: a holder for a CrowdLox 4L box, a removable desiccant tray, and interchangeable inserts for square, round and rectangular meters. Making those last two inserts gave me a particularly good example of what a design conversation can look like once there's a real object involved.
A printed version of the cereal-box spool holder, assembled with its tray and square meter.
The first test prints admitted the meters, but their retaining clips made getting them out a pain. I got the round one in and couldn't remove it without risking damage to the plastic. A more complicated cradle followed, but the round meter just spun around. Technically it fit. It wasn't what I wanted.
So I said so:
I'd rather make something more akin to the first one, but just with slots for the bits that grip to be able to pull in and out.
It needed to be deeper too. The simpler slotted frame worked beautifully for the round meter. The rectangular one took a little more adjustment: one version was too loose, another held nicely but had too much friction on removal. I asked for a fit halfway between them, then printed the two complete inserts. Both held securely and came out comfortably.
The rectangular-meter version, with the tray visible between the spool supports. The photos show the printed predecessors of the later simplified mount.
I subsequently asked to remove an awkward front pedestal because cleaning up its supports was annoying. That mounting change has been checked digitally, but I haven't printed it yet.
I became a software engineer because I wanted to make things. Now I have a printer, Wispr Flow and models capable enough that I'm not just a vibe coder anymore. I can talk through a change, print it, try it with the actual object and ask for the next change.
That opens up so much more of what I want to make: software, physical objects, hardware, and the crossover between them with microcontrollers. A few months ago I didn't own the printer. Now there are objects around me that started as things I said out loud. It's crazy. It feels like the future.