Imagine sketching a car with words or turning a photo of a chair into a 3D model you can manipulate. That’s the promise of CAD-GPT, a groundbreaking AI tool that's changing how we design. Traditionally, creating complex 3D models in computer-aided design (CAD) software required specialized skills and painstaking effort. Previous AI solutions tried to simplify the process, using abstract representations like latent vectors or point clouds, but they often produced inaccurate or incomplete designs. CAD-GPT tackles this problem head-on by integrating the power of multimodal large language models (MLLMs). These advanced AIs can understand both text and images, opening up exciting new possibilities for CAD. However, even cutting-edge MLLMs like GPT-4 struggle with spatial reasoning, the ability to understand and manipulate objects in 3D space. They might create a table with legs sticking out at odd angles or a car with misaligned wheels. The researchers behind CAD-GPT addressed this limitation by developing a novel “3D Modeling Spatial Mechanism.” This mechanism translates 3D coordinates and rotations into a language that the MLLM can understand, essentially teaching the AI the rules of 3D space. It also converts 2D sketches into special tokens, further enhancing the AI’s ability to interpret and generate designs. The results are impressive. CAD-GPT can create complex and accurate 3D models from either a single image or a text description. Tests show that CAD-GPT significantly outperforms existing methods, generating more accurate and valid models. For instance, it achieved a 48% reduction in error compared to previous state-of-the-art methods, and an even more dramatic 84% reduction compared to GPT-4 in image-to-CAD conversion. While CAD-GPT represents a significant leap forward, challenges remain. Training such a powerful model requires vast amounts of data and computational resources. The researchers used a dataset based on DeepCAD, a collection of CAD models and their corresponding command sequences, and augmented it with rendered images and text descriptions. The future of CAD-GPT is bright. Further development could lead to even more intuitive design tools, enabling anyone to create complex 3D models with ease. Imagine architects designing buildings with simple voice commands, or engineers generating customized parts from rough sketches. CAD-GPT is not just a research project; it's a glimpse into the future of design, where AI empowers us to turn imagination into reality.