# CADReasoner: Iterative Program Editing for CAD Reverse Engineering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29847 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29847/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 46 of its 63 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 18 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 46)

- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [Does Reinforcement Learning Really Incentivize Reasoning Capacity in LLMs Beyond the Base Model?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13837/) (2025)
- [CodeRL: Mastering Code Generation through Pretrained Models and Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01780/) (2022)
- [DeepCAD: A Deep Generative Network for Computer-Aided Design Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.09492/) (2021)
- [Spurious Rewards: Rethinking Training Signals in RLVR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.10947/) (2025)
- [Scan2CAD: Learning CAD Model Alignment in RGB-D Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11187/) (2018)
- [SkexGen: Autoregressive Generation of CAD Construction Sequences with Disentangled Codebooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04632/) (2022)
- [BrepGen: A B-rep Generative Diffusion Model with Structured Latent Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.15563/) (2024)
- [ParSeNet: A Parametric Surface Fitting Network for 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12181/) (2020)
- [BRepNet: A topological message passing system for solid models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00706/) (2021)
- [Write, Execute, Assess: Program Synthesis with a REPL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04604/) (2019)
- [Supervised Fitting of Geometric Primitives to 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.08988/) (2018)
- [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)
- [UCSG-Net -- Unsupervised Discovering of Constructive Solid Geometry Tree](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09102/) (2020)
- [Learning to Infer and Execute 3D Shape Programs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02875/) (2019)
- [PIE-NET: Parametric Inference of Point Cloud Edges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04883/) (2020)
- [CAD-Llama: Leveraging Large Language Models for Computer-Aided Design Parametric 3D Model Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04481/) (2025)
- [CAD-Recode: Reverse Engineering CAD Code from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14042/) (2024)
- [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)
- [Generating CAD Code with Vision-Language Models for 3D Designs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05340/) (2024)
- [CAD-Coder: Text-to-CAD Generation with Chain-of-Thought and Geometric Reward](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19713/) (2025)
- [CAD-GPT: Synthesising CAD Construction Sequence with Spatial Reasoning-Enhanced Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19663/) (2024)
- [CSG-Stump: A Learning Friendly CSG-Like Representation for Interpretable Shape Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.11305/) (2021)
- [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)
- [D2CSG: Unsupervised Learning of Compact CSG Trees with Dual Complements and Dropouts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.11497/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [IterCAD: An Iterative Multimodal Agent for Visually-Grounded CAD Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13368/) (2026)
- [CADENA: Stepwise CAD Reverse Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00799/) (2026)
- [CADWorld: Computer-Use Benchmark for Long-Horizon Computer-Aided Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.16251/) (2026)
- [CADForge: Agentic Single-View CAD Reconstruction with Explicit Geometry Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.04262/) (2026)
- [FACT: Fidelity-Aware Construction of Articulated Twins](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37067/) (2026)
- [StepCAD: Mesh-to-CAD Code Generation via LLM Policy and Geometry-Guided Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.03799/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) powers modern engineering, yet producing high-quality parts still demands substantial expert effort. Many AI systems tackle CAD reverse engineering, but most are single-pass and miss fine geometric details. In contrast, human engineers compare the input shape with the reconstruction and iteratively modify the design based on remaining discrepancies. Agent-based methods mimic this loop with frozen VLMs, but weak 3D grounding of current foundation models limits reliability and efficiency. We introduce CADReasoner, a model trained to iteratively refine its prediction using geometric discrepancy between the input and the predicted shape. The model outputs a runnable CadQuery Python program whose rendered mesh is fed back at the next step. CADReasoner fuses multi-view renders and point clouds as complementary modalities. To bridge the realism gap, we propose a scan-simulation protocol applied during both training and evaluation. Across DeepCAD, Fusion 360, and MCB benchmarks, CADReasoner attains state-of-the-art results on clean and scan-sim tracks.