Clarify Before You Draw: Proactive Agents for Robust Text-to-CAD Generation
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Multimodal and embodied agents
Abstract (arXiv)
Large language models have recently enabled text-to-CAD systems that synthesize parametric CAD programs (e.g., CadQuery) from natural-language prompts. In practice, however, geometric descriptions can be under-specified or internally inconsistent: critical dimensions may be missing and constraints may conflict. However, existing fine-tuned models tend to reactively follow the user instructions and hallucinate dimensions when the text is ambiguous. To address this, we propose a proactive agentic framework for text-to-CadQuery generation, named as ProCAD, that resolves specification issues before code synthesis. Our framework pairs a proactive clarifying agent, which audits the prompt and asks targeted clarification questions only when necessary to produce a self-consistent specification, with a CAD coding agent that translates the specification into an executable CadQuery program. We fine-tune the coding agent based on a curated high-quality text-to-CadQuery dataset and train the clarifying agent via agentic SFT on clarification trajectories. Experiments show that proactive clarification significantly improves robustness to ambiguous prompts while keeping interaction overhead low. ProCAD outperforms frontier closed-source models, including Claude Sonnet 4.5, reducing the mean Chamfer distance by 79.9% and lowering the invalidity ratio from 4.8% to 0.9%. Our code and datasets are made publicly available on https://github.com/BoYuanVisionary/Pro-CAD.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 39 of its 55 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2026.
Builds on
39 of 55 references.
References · 39
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27 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 7.
7 papers.
- 2026IterCAD: An Iterative Multimodal Agent for Visually-Grounded CAD Generation and Editingcited by 9
- 2026P3D-Bench: Benchmarking MLLMs for Parametric 3D Generation and Structural Reasoningcited by 8
- 2026CADIR: A Cross-Backend Editable Intermediate Representation for Agentic CAD Generationcited by 2
- 2026WorldBagel: Uncovering the Power of Unified Multimodal Models for Vision-Language-Action-World Modelingcited by 0
- 2026Wrong Design Intent Is Worse Than Never Conditioning: A Derangement-Control Diagnosis of Header Conditioning in CAD Program Completioncited by 0
- 2026RA-CAD: Learning Post-Execution Critique for State-Aware Text-to-CAD Generationcited by 0
- 2026ExpConCAD: Experience-Guided Text-to-CAD Generation from Shape Descriptions with Implicit Spatial Constraintscited by 0
- 2026ExpConCAD: Experience-Guided Text-to-CAD Generation from Shape Descriptions with Implicit Spatial Constraints25 Aug 2026
- 2026RA-CAD: Learning Post-Execution Critique for State-Aware Text-to-CAD Generation6 Aug 2026
- 2026CADIR: A Cross-Backend Editable Intermediate Representation for Agentic CAD Generation1 Aug 2026
- 2026Wrong Design Intent Is Worse Than Never Conditioning: A Derangement-Control Diagnosis of Header Conditioning in CAD Program Completion25 Jul 2026
- 2026WorldBagel: Uncovering the Power of Unified Multimodal Models for Vision-Language-Action-World Modeling3 Jul 2026
- 2026IterCAD: An Iterative Multimodal Agent for Visually-Grounded CAD Generation and Editing11 Jun 2026
- 2026P3D-Bench: Benchmarking MLLMs for Parametric 3D Generation and Structural Reasoning9 Jun 2026
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- 2026TOOLCAD: Exploring Tool-Using Large Language Models in Text-to-CAD Generation with Reinforcement Learning
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- 2026Zero-to-CAD: Agentic Synthesis of Interpretable CAD Programs at Million-Scale Without Real Data
- 2026Test-Time Scaling for CAD Generation via Verifier-Free Consensus Selection
- 2024An Agentic Approach to Automatic Creation of P&ID Diagrams from Natural Language Descriptions
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