The Action Institute

We are building a geometric representation that humans and computers can use to design, simulate and manufacture physical things. The design geometry becomes the simulation geometry. Engineering tools today are proprietary, fragmented and closed. The foundations were developed by a small group of people and few people understand it well enough to change it today. New foundations have to be discovered, not cloned. As of today these discoveries are out of reach for LLMs.

We call it the Geometry Commons: a public resource, a common representation for sharing physical things across tools, a common language between design and simulation, and between people and computers.

You can't make nice tools without making nice things. The work is developed through applied projects with domain experts in optics and ship design.

The project is run by Leo McElroy, with collaborators at MIT, University of Victoria, and University of Florida.