10 Ways to Use Onshape AI Advisor Today

Onshape AI Advisor is your go-to resource for quick and reliable answers about designing in Onshape’s powerful cloud-native CAD and PDM platform. Think of it as your smart design buddy that’s always ready to help, whether you’re stuck on a tricky feature or just want to work faster.

Onshape AI Advisor is now available directly inside of Onshape and in the Learning Center, and it’s packed with practical ways to make your design life easier. Here are 10 ways you can put it to work right now, with real prompts to get you started.

1. Make CAD Migration Less Painful

Moving from SOLIDWORKS or another CAD system can feel overwhelming when you’re dealing with years of legacy files in different formats. Import errors, lost geometry, and unfamiliar workflows can turn a simple project into a multi-day headache. AI Advisor guides you through the entire migration process, explaining file conversion best practices and helping you understand Onshape's unique approach to each feature.

2. Speed Up Your Daily Design Tasks

Even experienced users waste time on repetitive tasks like creating patterns, applying transforms, or setting up standard features. You know there’s probably a faster way, but finding it means digging through documentation or interrupting a colleague. AI Advisor instantly explains the most efficient approaches for common design tasks, helping you discover shortcuts and best practices.

3. Get Comfortable with Advanced Features

FeatureScript is Onshape’s built-in programming language used to create and customize CAD features. While it’s incredibly powerful for automation and custom workflows, the learning curve can be steep if you’re not a programmer. AI Advisor breaks down complex concepts into manageable steps and helps you navigate the FeatureScript documentation to understand how to build your own custom features.

4. Keep Large Assemblies Under Control

Complex assemblies with hundreds of parts can quickly become unwieldy, with slow regeneration times and confusing mate relationships. Finding the right mating strategy or troubleshooting why something won’t move correctly can eat up hours. AI Advisor explains assembly best practices and guides you through different mating strategies for various mechanism types.

5. Unlock True Team Collaboration

Onshape streamlines collaboration with branching and merging. But when multiple team members are working on the same project, managing versions and merging changes can get complicated fast. AI Advisor walks you through branching strategies, explains how to resolve conflicts, and helps you understand Onshape’s collaboration features.

6. Create Better Visuals

Your designs might be perfect, but if they don’t look good in presentations, stakeholders won’t be impressed. Setting up professional renders with the right materials, lighting, and camera angles usually requires trial and error. AI Advisor provides guidance on using Onshape's visualization tools and shares best practices for creating compelling renders.

7. Navigate Sheet Metal Like a Pro

Sheet metal design has its own rules – bend radii, K-factors, relief cuts – and getting them wrong means parts that can’t be manufactured correctly. Small mistakes in bend allowances can cascade into expensive production errors. AI Advisor helps you understand sheet metal principles and explains how to use Onshape’s sheet metal tools effectively for different materials and thicknesses.

8. Prep for Manufacturing Faster

The gap between design and manufacturing is where projects often stall, especially when preparing files for production or considering manufacturability. You need to think about tool access, material constraints, and production methods early in the design process. AI Advisor helps you understand design for manufacturing principles and guides you through Onshape’s tools for preparing models for production.

9. Nail Your Measurements

Missing a critical dimension or applying the wrong tolerance can mean the difference between parts that fit perfectly and expensive scrap. Understanding when to use different tolerance types and how to properly dimension complex geometry takes experience. AI Advisor guides you through dimensioning best practices and helps you understand Onshape's measurement and inspection tools.

10. Leverage Automation Tools

Every project has those mind-numbing repetitive tasks – renumbering parts after design changes, updating properties, or applying configurations across multiple components. These eat up time that could be spent actually designing. AI Advisor helps you discover and use Onshape’s built-in automation features like configurations, variables, and release management to streamline these workflows.

Quick Answers to Design Questions

AI Advisor is easily accessible directly inside of Onshape or in the Onshape Learning Center, providing users with step-by-step recommendations, troubleshooting ideas, and best practices, all within their design environment. Start with one question that’s been on your mind – maybe it's about that feature you’ve been avoiding or a workflow you know could be faster. Just type it in and see how AI Advisor can help.

This is just the beginning. Soon, AI assistance within Onshape will be able to do even more – from suggesting FeatureScript code to assisting with model troubleshooting and streamlining repetitive operations. The future of CAD is getting smarter every day, and with Onshape’s three-week release cycle, new AI capabilities are always just around the corner.

Your next breakthrough design might just start with a simple question.