From Dream to Production Part: How SketchMonkey and 3DJ Are Speeding Up Our Design

6 days ago

2 min read

A few weeks ago we joined Anthropic's startup program. Since then, our two in-house tools, SketchMonkey and 3DJ, have been plugged straight into Claude as connectors. The result? We're going from a rough idea to real, printable production parts in hours instead of weeks.

The test case: our own studio bar

Rather than demo on something abstract, we used our own space. Our studio in St. Paul's Bay needed a long wall-mounted standing bar: solid wood worktop, a faceted nose that follows the shape of our tapered mirror, pull-out trays, a sink section, and a clean white edge. Over five metres of furniture, with angles that are a nightmare to sketch by hand.

Step 1: Dream it with SketchMonkey

We started with a conversation. Claude turned the brief into SketchMonkey concept renders in seconds: warm oak, faceted corners, white edge segments, trays tucked underneath. Seeing photoreal options before cutting a single board meant we could judge proportions, materials and the overall feel of the room up front. The image at the top of this post came straight out of SketchMonkey.

Step 2: Engineer it with 3DJ

Next, Claude built the same design as a parametric CAD model in 3DJ and published it as a live 3D configurator we can open on a phone. Every key decision is a slider or toggle: top height, facet or curved step corner, mirror taper, nose depth, tray pull-out, edge colour, wall shelf. Change a value and the model rebuilds instantly, with real measured geometry behind it.

The numbers came out of the model, not out of guesswork: a 5.21 m bar made of 25 parts, brackets positioned at 160, 265, 370 and 474 cm, three trays on 300 to 500 mm slides, and a 5.34 m edge split into 29 printable segments using about 1.6 kg of PETG. One click exports STL, STEP or GLB.

Step 3: Make it

Then it's straight to the workshop. The worktop is being cut to the layout, the brackets are going on the wall at the positions the model specified, and the edge segments go to the 3D printer. Dream on Monday, parts in hand the same week.

Why AI plus 3D printing changes interior and industrial design

Better decisions, earlier: you compare real options visually and dimensionally before committing material or money.
Custom becomes normal: awkward walls, odd angles and one-off pieces stop being expensive special cases.
Fewer surprises on site: the cut list, bracket spacing and print files all come from one model.
Designers stay in control: AI does the heavy lifting, but every parameter is still a human choice.

What's next

We'll share the finished bar once it's installed, along with more projects built the same way. If you're a designer, architect or maker who wants to try SketchMonkey or 3DJ with Claude, get in touch at work@neuraldeep.net. Let's build.

— The Neural Deep Network Team