Summary
render_view exposes direction: top, front, side, iso. There is no way to look at a part's underside. For anything designed to be printed face-down — a phone case back, a bracket's mounting face, any shelled part — the underside is the interesting side, and it is the one view you cannot ask for.
The available workaround is to guess an elevation offset, but the offsets are not predictable because the docstring says only:
azimuth/elevation: camera rotation in degrees applied after the direction preset
It never states what each preset's baseline azimuth/elevation is, so you cannot compute the offset you need — only guess and re-render.
Concrete cost
Designing a phone case, trying to see the back:
| Call |
Result |
direction="iso", elevation=-35 |
edge-on sliver, part invisible |
direction="iso", elevation=-105 |
correct back view |
Two of seven renders in the session were wasted this way. Each render is a multi-second VTK round trip, and for an LLM caller each wasted image is also wasted context.
Suggested fix
- Add a
bottom preset (and ideally back / left for completeness). top already exists, so bottom is the obvious gap.
- Document each preset's baseline azimuth/elevation in the tool description, so
elevation= offsets are computable rather than guesswork.
Either one alone would have avoided the wasted renders; (1) is the smaller change.
Version
build123d-mcp 0.3.82.dev372, build123d 0.11.1, macOS.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code
Summary
render_viewexposesdirection:top,front,side,iso. There is no way to look at a part's underside. For anything designed to be printed face-down — a phone case back, a bracket's mounting face, any shelled part — the underside is the interesting side, and it is the one view you cannot ask for.The available workaround is to guess an
elevationoffset, but the offsets are not predictable because the docstring says only:It never states what each preset's baseline azimuth/elevation is, so you cannot compute the offset you need — only guess and re-render.
Concrete cost
Designing a phone case, trying to see the back:
direction="iso", elevation=-35direction="iso", elevation=-105Two of seven renders in the session were wasted this way. Each render is a multi-second VTK round trip, and for an LLM caller each wasted image is also wasted context.
Suggested fix
bottompreset (and ideallyback/leftfor completeness).topalready exists, sobottomis the obvious gap.elevation=offsets are computable rather than guesswork.Either one alone would have avoided the wasted renders; (1) is the smaller change.
Version
build123d-mcp 0.3.82.dev372, build123d 0.11.1, macOS.
🤖 Generated with Claude Code