Hi YC!

This is Kevin and Sohrab from Hestus and we are building an AI for Hardware Design.

TL;DR: There is no such thing like code completion for CAD, so we built it.

Our first tool, Sketch Helper, natively integrates into your CAD environment. It understands your design intent, and predicts your next move.

• Makes sketching 2.5x faster
• Requires 4x fewer clicks
• Accept suggestions with a single key stroke
• Over 1000 engineers are already using it

https://youtu.be/-I6IZCwt-rw

Problem

Mechanical engineers are fast at conceptual design but get buried in "click-work."  Getting a concept ready for manufacturing takes countless, manual and error-prone clicks to assign constraints and dimensions.

As one of our users said:

Only a third of my time goes into real design work. The rest is just clicking through sketches and dimensions, and I can only click so fast.

Solution

We built “Sketch Helper,” a copilot for sketching in CAD.

It understands your design intent and proposes your next move, may it be adding constraints, missing dimensions, or even additional geometries to your sketch. You can preview any of the proposed changes in a red overlay and accept it with a single keystroke.

Next, we are going to expand into full 3D and build “Mate Helper” and “GD&T Helper” to help not just with design but as well as design for manufacturing.

The big vision

The biggest problem in hardware is the silo between design and manufacturing, which leads to endless, costly iterations.

The push to reshore American manufacturing has hit a major bottleneck: we lack the deep bench of manufacturing experts we once had. As Tim Cook noted, the skilled tooling and manufacturing expertise is no longer concentrated here (https://youtu.be/_ng8xQ-SNGc?si=WzfP4aCJmec1lJo4&t=547).

Our AI learns design intent by observing an engineer's actions in CAD. By starting with sketching, we are building the foundation model that understands why a part is designed a certain way.

This is the key to an AI that can provide real-time manufacturability feedback, bridging the gap between design and manufacturing and automating the tooling design process.

Who we are why we are the team to crack this nut

We’ve felt this pain firsthand. We (Kevin and Sohrab) were both early employees at Cruise. Kevin led the AV engineering team, scaling it from 20 to 300+ people. Sohrab founded the rocket company SpaceRyde (YC W19) securing millions in launch contracts and led laser tech development at Mitsubishi. We’ve built and shipped AI for self-driving cars, surgical robotics, and rocket launches. Now, we are fixing hardware development.

Ask

• For Autodesk Fusion users: Please try Sketch Helper. It's free and we guarantee it will make you faster.

• For everyone else: What CAD platform do you or your team use? Reach

  us out at founders@hestus.co. We are prioritizing our expansion based on your feedback.

• If you are building hardware, we would love to hear about the biggest challenges that slow you down.