AI Across CAD-PDM-PLM with the Onshape-Arena Connection

AI is beginning to take on practical roles across product development, from creating reusable CAD tools to helping teams find and understand the product information surrounding a design.

PTC’s Onshape and Arena bring these capabilities to different parts of the development process. In Onshape, engineers can use AI to help create custom modeling features from natural-language requirements. Arena embeds AI within product lifecycle management (PLM) and quality management system (QMS) workflows to help streamline document analysis, information access, compliance, and supply chain decision making. The Onshape-Arena Connection connects the product data moving between those environments.

Together, they show what AI can look like when it becomes part of existing product development workflows instead of another disconnected tool.

Cloud-Native CAD, PDM, PLM Keep Product Information Connected

Onshape combines CAD and PDM in a cloud-native environment. Engineers can work with version history, branching, merging, comparison, and release management while product data remains within the same system.

Arena extends product information into PLM and QMS workflows for teams working beyond CAD.

The Onshape-Arena Connection brings those environments together, allowing engineering data to move from Onshape into Arena while Onshape users remain in Onshape and Arena users remain in Arena.

That connection becomes especially important when a design is ready to move beyond engineering.

Design Changes Stay Connected Downstream

Consider a familiar scenario. A design review identifies a component that needs to change. The engineer needs to modify the CAD model, capture the new revision, and make sure the updated information reaches the people responsible for the broader product.

Onshape provides branching, merging, and comparison tools for exploring and reviewing design changes.

When that design passes through the Onshape-Arena Connection, the bill of materials (BOM) is synchronized. Onshape release candidates correspond to Arena engineering change orders (ECOs). Parts included in the release candidate can be added to that ECO in Arena.

The connection can also automatically generate and associate PDF drawing files and STEP files with the relevant Arena items for supported release content.

Instead of treating CAD release and downstream product development as separate processes, the connection keeps the engineering revision tied to the product information that other teams need.

How AI is Changing Workflows in Onshape and Arena

AI is already taking on practical roles across the product development process. These capabilities show how AI can support both product design and the processes surrounding it.

Onshape FeatureScript MCP Server Turns Engineering Knowledge into Reusable CAD Tools

FeatureScript has long allowed Onshape users to create custom modeling features and capture engineering knowledge as reusable CAD tools. The Onshape FeatureScript MCP Server from Onshape Labs makes creating those capabilities more accessible with AI.

Engineers can describe the functionality they need in natural language, and AI helps build, test, debug, and refine the FeatureScript behind the Custom Feature. The result is not simply geometry generated from a prompt. It is a reusable Custom Feature that can be shared across projects and teams.

That distinction is important. Rather than asking AI to generate the same kind of output over and over, teams can use AI to help turn established design practices into custom CAD capabilities. Once created, those tools become part of the engineering workflow.

AI helps create the capability. FeatureScript makes it reusable.

Arena AI’s Engine Makes PLM and QMS Workflows Easier to Navigate

Arena embeds AI-driven intelligence into PLM and QMS workflows to help teams improve productivity and speed decision-making. Key capabilities include:

• Conversational AI Assistant helps users quickly find answers and navigate product information to speed onboarding and reduce time spent searching documentation
• AI File Summary condenses lengthy documentation into clear, actionable insights to help teams speed reviews and approvals
• AI File Comparison automatically highlights changes across specifications, designs, diagrams, and other files to reduce manual checks and compliance risk
• AI File Insights enables users to uncover valuable information from their documentation.
• AI Item Redline summarizes changes between item revisions so reviewers can focus on significant updates
• Supply chain intelligence (SCI) provides real-time visibility into electronic component risk and monitors BOM health

Where the FeatureScript MCP Server helps engineers create new CAD capabilities, Arena AI Assistant helps users work with the information and processes already managed in Arena.

Together, the two illustrate different ways AI can fit into connected product development: helping engineers build specialized design tools in CAD and helping downstream teams navigate complex product information and workflows.

The Next Step for AI in Onshape and Arena

The capabilities available today are only part of the story. Both Onshape and Arena are exploring how AI can become more integrated with the systems and information product development teams already use, extending its role beyond individual prompts and questions.

Onshape Labs Explores What AI Can Do Next in CAD

Onshape Labs provides early access to emerging capabilities directly within the Onshape cloud-native CAD and PDM environment, creating a place to explore new technologies and incorporate customer feedback as they develop. AI-powered workflows are among the areas being explored through the program.

That creates room to rethink more than individual modeling tasks. The longer-term opportunity is to give AI more useful engineering context and more ways to interact with the tools and data involved in design.

The direction builds naturally on the FeatureScript MCP Server. Today, AI can help an engineer create a reusable CAD capability. Emerging approaches can explore how AI might work with a broader range of engineering information and workflows.

Arena Extends AI Across Product Development

Arena is heading in a similar direction on the PLM and QMS side.

Arena's broader AI direction points toward more specialized forms of assistance across product development.

Taken together with Onshape Labs, that direction suggests an expanding role for AI across CAD, PDM, PLM, and QMS, grounded in the product information and workflows teams already use.

Connected Product Data = Stronger Foundation for AI

The capabilities available today establish the foundation. The experiments and technologies now being developed suggest where it could lead.

As AI gains a greater understanding of engineering context and more ways to interact with product development systems, its role can expand from providing assistance to supporting increasingly sophisticated engineering and product workflows.

For Onshape and Arena, the opportunity is to bring that intelligence into the environments where engineers and product teams already work, connecting AI to the actual tools, data, and processes behind physical product development.