# CSGNet: Neural Shape Parser for Constructive Solid Geometry

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.08290 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.08290/

## Key facts

- Cited by 106 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 22 Dec 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 106)

- [DeepCAD: A Deep Generative Network for Computer-Aided Design Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09492/) (2021)
- [SkexGen: Autoregressive Generation of CAD Construction Sequences with Disentangled Codebooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04632/) (2022)
- [Hypothesis Search: Inductive Reasoning with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05660/) (2023)
- [Im2Vec: Synthesizing Vector Graphics without Vector Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.02798/) (2021)
- [Neural Parts: Learning Expressive 3D Shape Abstractions with Invertible Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10429/) (2021)
- [BrepGen: A B-rep Generative Diffusion Model with Structured Latent Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15563/) (2024)
- [Hierarchical Neural Coding for Controllable CAD Model Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00149/) (2023)
- [CAD-MLLM: Unifying Multimodality-Conditioned CAD Generation With MLLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04954/) (2024)
- [SolidGen: An Autoregressive Model for Direct B-rep Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13944/) (2022)
- [SketchGen: Generating Constrained CAD Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02711/) (2021)
- [Vitruvion: A Generative Model of Parametric CAD Sketches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.14124/) (2021)
- [CAD-SIGNet: CAD Language Inference from Point Clouds using Layer-wise Sketch Instance Guided Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17678/) (2024)
- [CAPRI-Net: Learning Compact CAD Shapes with Adaptive Primitive Assembly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05652/) (2021)
- [Point2Cyl: Reverse Engineering 3D Objects from Point Clouds to Extrusion Cylinders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09329/) (2021)
- [CSG-Stump: A Learning Friendly CSG-Like Representation for Interpretable Shape Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11305/) (2021)
- [Engineering Sketch Generation for Computer-Aided Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09621/) (2021)
- [SECAD-Net: Self-Supervised CAD Reconstruction by Learning Sketch-Extrude Operations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10613/) (2023)
- [CAD-Coder: An Open-Source Vision-Language Model for Computer-Aided Design Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14646/) (2025)
- [Reconstructing editable prismatic CAD from rounded voxel models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01161/) (2022)
- [ARAPReg: An As-Rigid-As Possible Regularization Loss for Learning Deformable Shape Generators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.09432/) (2021)
- [D2CSG: Unsupervised Learning of Compact CSG Trees with Dual Complements and Dropouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11497/) (2023)
- [ExtrudeNet: Unsupervised Inverse Sketch-and-Extrude for Shape Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15632/) (2022)
- [Img2CAD: Conditioned 3D CAD Model Generation from Single Image with Structured Visual Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.03417/) (2024)
- [HPNet: Deep Primitive Segmentation Using Hybrid Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10620/) (2021)
- [The Scene Language: Representing Scenes with Programs, Words, and Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16770/) (2024)
- [Img2CAD: Reverse Engineering 3D CAD Models from Images through VLM-Assisted Conditional Factorization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01437/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Understand Symbolic Graphics Programs?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08313/) (2024)
- [PC2WF: 3D Wireframe Reconstruction from Raw Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02766/) (2021)
- [CADOps-Net: Jointly Learning CAD Operation Types and Steps from Boundary-Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10555/) (2022)
- [HoLa: B-Rep Generation using a Holistic Latent Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14257/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a neural architecture that takes as input a 2D or 3D shape and outputs a program that generates the shape. The instructions in our program are based on constructive solid geometry principles, i.e., a set of boolean operations on shape primitives defined recursively. Bottom-up techniques for this shape parsing task rely on primitive detection and are inherently slow since the search space over possible primitive combinations is large. In contrast, our model uses a recurrent neural network that parses the input shape in a top-down manner, which is significantly faster and yields a compact and easy-to-interpret sequence of modeling instructions. Our model is also more effective as a shape detector compared to existing state-of-the-art detection techniques. We finally demonstrate that our network can be trained on novel datasets without ground-truth program annotations through policy gradient techniques.