What have you used AI for in a significant way?

[Garagelab]

I’ll share some of my experience. I’ve used ChatGPt, Deepseek, CoPilot, Claude, Gemini, and have local llms running on two computers at home. I’m finding incredible potential for llm use in my engineering work with the models that can call tools and follow predetermined workflows.

I converted 15 years of design spreadsheets and fragmented design scripts into a unified python-based GUI. And then added dozens of new analyses that cover 80-100% of features of some commercial software I usually use.

I also finally went through all of my devices and compiled my engineering reference library and had Claude and codex help identify and sort through the 1,000+ documents for dupes, erroneous files, etc.

Then I used Claude code to build a gui and reference management library. After spending 2 years learning how to best convert pdf to markdown, I have an automated workflow for converting new references, performing automated QC on equations and tables, general formatting, and doing more than a dozen other checks. Then, I can chunk the text file (also highly tailored for my engineering docs), and add new files to my vector store for retrieval augmented generation (RAG). It’s amazing how good llms can be when you tell them exactly what to read and use, and to not recall anything from the actual model except for language syntax.

Back to my engineering GUI…I’m building out an API that allows the llm to talk to my engineering software and read, create, and modify project info, field data, and analyses. With over 150 tools, I just give the design I want to perform in plain English and the llm calls the right tools to do pile design, or retaining wall design, or to summarize my site information and field data, and suggest where data gaps exist. I created dozens of files that tell the llm exactly what methods to use and how to perform them when I ask for specific details or analysis.

But I have a bunch of other random projects I’m working on. I wish I had my own data center at this point. I generated ~130M tokens in the past 30 days on Claude, and I’m trying the Codex Pro tier. Id like to keep 3-4 AI workers busy for 16-18 hours a day.

[BCtriguy1]

@Tik

Work I do a lot of DFM on mechanical parts for new customers. I can load .pdf file drawings into it and have it do an review. Basic stuff like what it is made from, coatings/plating, but also ask it to highlight any potential technical challenges with tolerances etc. Spits out preferred mfg method and potential alternates. Then I can review closer to make final decisions. It’s fairly accurate but misses on cycle times etc but that is likely due to lack of input.

I recently had to order a bunch of custom fabricated components out of aluminum. I went to a website where you chat with an AI agent, upload a picture (in my case hand drawn) of what you want, describe the dimensions, the type of aluminum, thickness, finish etc and it spits you out a 3D model for confirmation. A few tweaks and design was done. The parts were all cnc’ed, powder coated and shipped to my door (from US to Canada) in like 6 days.

If I were to get that done by a local shop, I probably would spend twice the amount of time just trying to get a call back. I doubt I’d even get a quote back in 6 days.