Motivation
I wanted to design a keychain that serves a practical purpose — reminding the owner where they've parked their car. The concept uses a miniature car as the knob and a gear shift mechanism to indicate the parking location. Rather than jumping straight into CAD software, I turned to Claude to brainstorm and iterate on the design.
Process
Using Claude's brainstorming capabilities, I was able to rapidly explore different form factors, proportions and mechanical considerations for the keychain. Each iteration refined the design — from the shape of the car knob to the feel of the gear shift — before committing anything to a final model. This back-and-forth made it easy to think through potential issues early and arrive at a design worth printing.
Result
Once the design was settled, I fed the final model to my 3D printer. The iterative prompting workflow meant fewer failed prints and less wasted filament. It's a good example of how conversational AI can fit naturally into a physical prototyping pipeline.