Top all-time · #2824
Zoo
Company blog · zoo.dev/bloghardwareprogramming
Zoo is the company blog at zoo.dev, writing about hardware and programming. Since 2023, 26 different Hacker News readers have linked it 41 times, most often “CAD Software for Hardware Design – Zoo”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (24) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Zoo (zoo.dev, formerly KittyCAD), a code-first CAD company with a text-to-CAD tool, its KCL language and a cloud geometry kernel. Links point to product, docs and careers pages.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 24 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Zoo creates infrastructure for hardware design. We're laying the foundation for a modern hardware design toolkit, so that you can create new design tools never before possible.
Most-linked posts?
- CAD Software for Hardware Design – Zoo7 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2024-06-18
- Zoo Design Studio4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-05-21
- The future of GenerativeCAD and fall of Autodesk / Solidworks3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-07-11
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-02-10
What Hacker News says?
I see you're familiar with zoo. [0] [0] https://zoo.dev/design-studio
Comment linking /design-studio
on “At Amazon, some coders say their jobs have begun to resemble warehouse work”Submitted Zoo CAD Engine Overview as a story · 44 points
HN discussionDoes anyone know if Zoo/KittyCad uses the similar principles under the hood? https://zoo.dev/geometry-engine
Comment linking /geometry-engine
on “Fidget”Submitted Makefile.md – Possibly Use(Ful|Less) Polyglot Synthesis of Makefile and Markdown as a story · 25 points
HN discussionThanks for your reply! The team built a code-first CAD GUI that leverages UI for code generation while streaming a 3D scene from our remote, in-house graphics engine that the team built from the ground up- which is the first GPU-based, cloud-implemented system all accessible via our API. Here is a link to the open-source modeling app: https://zoo.dev/modeling-app Here is a link to our Founding Engineer's blog post a…
Comment linking /blog/why-modeling-app
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2024)”Submitted Zoo Design Studio v1: A New Stack for Mechanical CAD as a story · 11 points
HN discussionZoo.dev is hiring a Senior Frontend Software Engineer with a core focus on 3D web application performance. Zoo's mission is to revolutionize the CAD industry by developing the world's most advanced hardware design infrastructure and tools. Mechanical CAD is in the dark ages, and hardware demands have outpaced today’s hardware design infrastructure. The industry is due for a refresh, and we're laying the foundation f…
Comment linking /jobs/4380892005?gh_src&gh_jid=4380892005
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2024)”Submitted Zoo Design Studio as a story · 6 points
HN discussionhttps://zoo.dev/design-studio is better in ever conceivable way
Comment linking /design-studio
on “LL3M: Large Language 3D Modelers”Submitted The future of GenerativeCAD and fall of Autodesk / Solidworks as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI've been using zoo and its KCL language with some success for boundary-representation CAD writing. If I understood correctly, µcad serves the same purpose. Comparing code samples between both of them, I personally enjoy KCL's pipelined approach more. My main beef with zoo is the fact that they are promoting vendor lock-in by forcing users to use their cloud-hosted geometry kernel with absolutely no local alternativ…
Comment linking /docs/kcl-samples/spur-gear
on “µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D”Submitted Zoo as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI know https://zoo.dev/careers is hiring
Comment linking /careers
on “Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2025)”Submitted Text-to-CAD as a story · 3 points
HN discussionare you using https://zoo.dev/ to help create the cad files? they have a text to cad tool
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)”Submitted CAD Software for Hardware Design – Zoo as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou seem to know what you're talking about. I am completely ignorant of this field, but I have been hearing about https://zoo.dev/design-studio (nee. "kitty cad") for a while because I follow one of the lead devs and it seems like it offers similar features. I would be very interested to get a comparison from someone who understands the terrain.
Comment linking /design-studio
on “Spectral Labs releases SGS-1: the first generative model for structured CAD”Submitted Text to CAD Public Alpha as a story · 2 points
HN discussionZoo and openSCAD both create 3D objects using code in a domain specific language. Other than that, very different. OpenSCAD has limited ambitions; Zoo wants to kill Autodesk. Zoo is building a commercial grade product suite from first principles. They're writing a new geometry kernel and optimizing it for GPUs. They wrote a new domain specific language for CAD [0]. They're running the kernel on the cloud behind an A…
Comment linking /blog/mechanical-cad-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow
on “We are shutting down Ondsel”Submitted Delouse as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOpenSCAD is my go-to. It's self-contained and AI coding tools know the syntax well enough to help you move fast. Unfortunately I keep hitting a complexity ceiling. If it doesn't like how I'm describing something, it crashes. I have to load an older version of my .scad and try a new approach. This usually happens 70% of the way into a complex project, which is quite discouraging. The Python ecosystem has CadQuery[0]…
Comment linking /
on “We are shutting down Ondsel”Submitted Generate CAD from Text Prompts as a story · 1 points
HN discussionReal bummer. I’m keeping an eye on Zoo (fka KittyCAD) for my personal CAD work https://zoo.dev/
Comment linking /
on “We are shutting down Ondsel”Submitted Tales from a Mechanical Engineer (2023) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCheck out https://zoo.dev/ I went from OpenSCAD -> cadquery/build123d -> Zoo/KCL It still is early days, and it needs some more helper functions but it's really nice having two-way capabilities (not just code -> model, but also the reverse). Of course having Text-to-model as a first class citizen is also nice.
Comment linking /
on “OpenSCAD is kinda neat”any idea how it stacks up against zoo / zookeeper? https://zoo.dev/research/zookeeper
Comment linking /research/zookeeper
on “Show HN: Copperhead – Cursor for circuit boards”Oh cool! That looks like a super interesting product. https://zoo.dev
Comment linking /
on “Oxide raises $200M Series C”Have you tried zoo cad (formerly kittycad)?. It may be still too early but worth keeping your eye on. https://zoo.dev/
Comment linking /
on “Versioning FreeCAD Files with Git (2021)”I saw a programatic Web cad tool before, took a moment to find it (and along the way I found a few others). Caveat: of these I have only used Onshape, and I tend to use it via the graphical interface. - First up Onshape is web based, but is actually programmable behind the scenes (and all documents are scripts under the hood). This is used to let you write plugins it for it. - The one I was thinking of used to be ca…
Comment linking /
on “3D printing with unconventional vase mode”From a 2024 interview: > In this episode, we sit down with Jessie Frazelle, CEO and co-founder of Zoo, a company working on innovative software and hardware technology. Jessie shares her fascinating journey, from getting her start at digital agencies to working at tech giants like Google and Microsoft and ultimately co-founding her own successful startup, Zoo. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MkDJMiB_8U > Zoo make…
Comment linking /
on “Oxide Computer raises $445M (SEC Form D)”
