Comment
Since April 2019 this website has provided students and scientists with the documentation for the Solid Geometry Library, with which bodies, mechanisms and robots can be designed automatically. Additional data and previous versions can be downloaded from the server of the Institute of Micro Technology and Medical Device Technology (MIMED), Technische Universität München.
After the MathWorks Summit in Natick in 2026, I redesigned this website together with Claude Opus 4.8.
The SG-Lib is fifteen years of collected, real engineering work — standard parts, bearings, fits and joining sequences. It is not “easy”, and generative AI does not replace it; the AI’s task is to use this engineering knowledge to construct correctly.
The library grows through discussion and through code from other researchers:
- Franz Irlinger — mechanism design
- Yilun Sun — FEM, shape optimization, topology optimization, SG-Coder design, SGCL language concept
- Robin Schregle — LLM interface to SG-Lib and MATLAB
- Yannick Krieger & Mattias Traeger — gears and memory-shape structures
- Simon Schiele — mechanical joints
- Christian Dietz — SG-Coder language concept, NDI Vicra/Aurora interface
- Michael Kruttschnitt — screws and additive manufacturing support
- Andreas Schroeffer — slicing, fill structures, G-code generation
- Alexandra Mercader — colours in STL and OBJ files
Acknowledgements
I thank Peter Corke for the motivation to make the SG-Lib accessible to others. And I thank my gear-mechanics teacher Franz Irlinger for his essential hints and conversations on linkage mechanisms.
And because my esteemed colleague Reiner Anderl — going back to the Karlsruhe days of Hans Grabowski and Ulrich Rembold — remarked during the review of the SFB 989 in 2013 that it is impossible today to still compete with the established CAD systems, I felt the drive to make this project my own — without DFG funding.
— Tim C. Lueth
The first surface-modelling function of the SG-Lib was VLFLaddpoint.m, written on 21 October 2010 — today named VLFLcat.