AI in CAD: How Onshape Makes Intelligence Part of Your Daily Workflow

AI is becoming the new standard in professional engineering software. What once seemed futuristic – getting instant, accurate answers within your design environment – is now table stakes.

This shift is why we, the Onshape team at PTC, developed AI Advisor, a valuable new tool that delivers something more practical: making AI assistance so reliable and integrated that you forget it’s even “AI.”

AI Advisor, available both within Onshape itself and the Onshape Learning Center, provides instant, accurate answers based on our extensive documentation library. Think of it as your CAD platform simply being smarter when you need help.

Note: AI Advisor is not yet available in-app for Onshape Government, but users can access it by creating a free Onshape account at cad.onshape.com through the Learning Center.

What Does AI in CAD Actually Look Like?

“Onshape AI Advisor has become a valuable part of our design process,” Jacob Friedrich, senior mechanical engineer at Current Lighting, said in a press release about the launch. “It helps me find features that are handled differently in other CAD tools, and the conversational interface makes refining queries simple.”

Current Lighting’s feedback reflects what we’re hearing across engineering teams: AI’s value isn’t in flashy demos but in speed, accuracy, and trust. Engineers want tools that reduce friction, help them iterate faster, and support better decisions without changing the way they already work.

And that’s what AI Advisor fulfills. It’s not a futuristic concept with unclear potential, but rather something teams are putting to work today, yielding results.

What Makes AI Advisor’s Answers So Reliable?

The truth about AI is that it’s only as good as the information it’s trained on. While others might scrape generic technical content from the internet, Onshape’s AI Advisor draws from something much more valuable: Our comprehensive library of documentation, learning resources, and best practices.

Instead of relying on broad data, AI Advisor utilizes authoritative information specifically about Onshape’s capabilities, which is updated every three weeks alongside our platform releases. When you ask a question, you’re getting answers based on the same documentation our own engineers reference, not guesses from generic information.

The conversational interface adds another layer of precision. Need to clarify your question? Want more detail on a specific aspect? Just ask.

But Onshape AI Advisor is only the beginning. The impact of AI on CAD will be profound, and only an architecture purpose-built for real-time data, seamless collaboration, and enterprise governance will be able to fully harness what’s ahead.

Why Cloud-Native is the Ideal Foundation for AI

Onshape’s cloud-native architecture provides the foundation for future AI capabilities that file-based CAD tools simply can’t match. This foundation matters for four key reasons:

Data Depth & Fidelity

For AI to deliver intelligent design recommendations, it needs comprehensive, high-quality data. CAD built on cloud architecture:

• Captures every design decision and microversion in real-time, creating the comprehensive dataset AI needs to learn patterns and make intelligent recommendations.
• Creates structured, continuous data streams rather than fragmented file snapshots, eliminating the preprocessing burden that plagues traditional CAD systems.
• Provides the granularity and fidelity that sophisticated AI models require, enabling precise suggestions rather than generic approximations.

Rich Context for AI Understanding

AI-assisted tools will need to understand engineering intent. To do so means going beyond geometry to design rationale. With cloud-native CAD:

• AI learns not only what a design looks like but also how and why it evolved, enabling suggestions that align with the engineering intent.
• Design history becomes an accessible training signal, transforming AI from a reactive tool into a proactive partner.
• Eliminates data silos, allowing AI to draw insights across projects, teams, and time, compounding value with every interaction.

Real-Time Collaboration with AI

Seamless human-to-AI collaboration depends on simultaneous access to live data. Cloud-native CAD enables:

• No file locking, meaning engineers and AI tools can work simultaneously without workflow friction.
• Instant visibility into all changes to ensure AI always operates on current data, eliminating version conflicts.
• AI to become an integrated team member, enabling natural adoption without disrupting established workflows.
• Real-time responsiveness that catches issues immediately, before they propagate into costly downstream problems.

Enterprise Security & Compliance

Deploying AI at scale means maintaining enterprise-grade security and full auditability. Cloud-native CAD allows for:

• Granular permission controls down to the document level govern what data AI tools can access.
• Complete audit trails provide full traceability for every AI suggestion, modification, or analysis.
• Enterprise-grade security means AI adoption doesn't create new risk vectors or compliance gaps.

Cloud-native architecture removes the technical barriers that have historically limited AI in traditional CAD systems. By providing rich, structured data with complete design history, enabling real-time collaboration between humans and AI tools, and maintaining enterprise-grade security throughout, cloud-native platforms transform AI from a bolted-on feature into a natural extension of the engineering workflow.

The result is AI that doesn’t just assist design, it actively participates in it, learning from every interaction and delivering compounding value over time.

What’s Next for AI in CAD?

The roadmap ahead focuses on ambitious, yet practical, improvements:

• FeatureScript Optimization: Complete code quicker with AI-assisted suggestions for custom feature development
• AI Quick Render: Create professional-grade renderings from natural-language prompts, accelerating visualizations and design review workflows
• AI Agents: Handle multiple routine engineering tasks automatically, freeing up time to handle design decisions

These aren’t pie-in-the-sky promises. They’re logical next steps built on the accurate, reliable foundation we’ve already established.

Where Does AI Fit in Modern Engineering?

“We're shaping an engineering culture where AI is a trusted partner in the design process,” said David Katzman, EVP and GM at PTC.

That word – trusted – is key. Trust is built on accuracy, reliability, and consistency. It comes from AI that understands your specific CAD platform, not generic engineering concepts. It comes from assistance that’s always there but never in the way.

With Onshape’s cloud-native foundation, comprehensive documentation, and commitment to practical innovation, we keep pace with AI developments while making them useful from day one. And with updates every three weeks, “day one” happens more often than you might expect.

Welcome to the new normal in CAD, where engineers spend less time searching for answers and more time creating solutions.