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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25736 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026

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I use Claude regularly for small / light programming or scripting tasks. It makes me more productive but I'm careful to use it in areas where I'm likely to catch it's mistakes.

I'll occasionally throw other tasks at it hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Recently I've started playing a tabletop RPG with my two oldest boys and and a friend who is much more into the RPG space. Claude was able to take a pdf of the RPG rule book, assist me with a character sheet and make sensible recommendations for the character. However when asked to create a STL file for a 3d printed miniature of the character, it complied but the results were inconsistent with its description of its output.

Here's your miniature. The model is 28mm heroic scale on a 25mm round base, standing about 30mm tall. It features The Man's key gear: crossbow held at the ready, long hazmat coat with a pushed-back hood, asymmetric goggles (the right lens is larger — that's the Focus Lens), belt pouches, and a coat collar.

/images/1772027385298665.webp

When told and showed it was struggling it tried again.

Here's v2. This version uses lofted elliptical cross-sections instead of boxes and cylinders, so the shapes should be much smoother and more organic. Key improvements: Smooth torso/coat silhouette with natural taper from shoulders to waist to flared coat hem Properly shaped legs visible below the coat hem with distinct boots Arms with elbow joints, reaching forward to hold the crossbow naturally Crossbow with curved limbs, bowstring, and a bolt loaded on the rail Head with jaw, brow ridge, nose, and the asymmetric goggles (larger Focus Lens on the right) Pushed-back hood bunched at the rear of the head Belt pouches and lapel lines on the coat 5,700 triangles vs 2,300 before

/images/177202743950954.webp

When told it was still struggling it gave up.

Ha — fair enough. I appreciate the patience. The honest answer is that generating a detailed humanoid miniature purely from code is the wrong tool for the job. I'm stacking ellipses and spheres, which will always produce something that looks like a snowman holding a stick, no matter how many iterations I do.

I had a very similar experience providing it a a floorplan, asking to to remove specified walls and layout a kitchen.

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