Going forward, you will be able to complete complex designs easily by chatting with Solidworks' AI assistant as if you were talking to ChatGPT.
Manish Kumar, Solidworks chief executive officer, said this at a press conference for 3D Experience World 2026 on Feb. 2 (local time) at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas. He said, About 30 years ago, we launched Solidworks with the goal of putting CAD (computer-aided design) software on every engineer's desk, and recently we integrated generative artificial intelligence (AI) into Solidworks to significantly lower the barrier to entry for design.
Solidworks is the flagship 3D CAD (computer-aided design) software from France's Dassault Systemes and is one of the most widely used product development platforms worldwide in mechanical and product design. In fact, Dassault Systemes holds a 44% share of the global CAD market. In recent years, Dassault Systemes has focused on applying AI to Solidworks to improve efficiency across the entire engineering process, including product design, drawing creation, simulation, and 3D modeling.
Kumar said, Until now CAD was the domain of experts, but with the advent of AI, people who are not experts can also design. On this day, Dassault Systemes unveiled Solidworks-only AI assistants AURA, LEO, and MARIE. When a worker types a request into a chat window as if conversing with an AI chatbot, these three "virtual companions" help generate new designs based on various data such as the worker's existing design proposals and documents.
Kumar explained, Even non-Photoshop experts these days are image-generation experts in the sense that if they ask ChatGPT or Gemini for a specific image, an AI chatbot creates it immediately, and we developed Aura, Leo, and Marie to achieve a similar level of accessibility in design.
Aura is an AI assistant that coordinates knowledge and context across the project. Kumar said, Aura agrees with users' opinions and supports their work like popular large language model (LLM)-based chatbots on the market and exists for idea exploration.
Leo handles more specific engineering and reasoning. When a worker presents a design idea, Leo checks whether it is actually buildable. Marie serves as the scientist among the trio, offering scientific advice based on materials, chemistry, and microbiology.
For example, if you enter the question, What material should be used for the wing of this electric hydrofoil?, Aura explores various possibilities and makes recommendations, Marie presents scientific grounds for which material would be most efficient, and Leo indicates whether a particular material is feasible in the real world.
Kumar said that using the three AI assistants together, you can complete a design easily with requests such as Make a shape 100 cm wide and 20 cm long, Select the vertical edges and apply a fillet, and Drill two holes in the top face. He said, The biggest advantage is that when doing complex design work, you can work easily by conversing with Solidworks. The company said this can shorten work time and reduce costs.
However, regarding concerns that advances in AI-based design solutions could cost engineers their jobs, he said, AI is just the engine; the driver who decides where to go is the engineer. He added, AI is suitable for tasks such as automating repetitive work, but it does not understand the physical world, emphasizing, The ability to understand and implement the physical world remains uniquely human.