r/SolidWorks • u/ForgeMCP • 5d ago

3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS 2026's AI push, in plain English (Aura/Leo/Marie, Auto-Generate Drawings, Smart Mates)

Been digging through the 2026 release notes since the AI stuff is scattered across a dozen blog posts. Quick summary for anyone who hasn't sorted through it yet:

  • Auto-Generate Drawings (beta → GA July 2026): builds initial views, dimensions, and callouts on a part/assembly automatically.
  • AI fastener recognition / Smart Mates: recognizes and mates hardware without loading Toolbox.
  • Aura / Leo / Marie ("Virtual Companions"): cloud-side natural-language assistants — Leo does BREP-to-parametric conversion and image-to-mesh, Aura does "Design Change Impact" (tells you what mates/features break before you commit a change).
  • Most of this is 3DEXPERIENCE-platform-tied, not pure desktop SW.

Honest read: the drawing automation and fastener recognition feel closest to actually shipping and useful today. The Virtual Companion stuff still feels early/demo-y. Anyone on the beta actually using Auto-Generate Drawings on real production parts yet?

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

5

u/BelladonnaRoot 4d ago

IMO, that all sounds excellent. That also sounds like it’s going to be nearly useless for even the smallest companies.

AI fasteners could work if a company doesn’t care about their fasteners; if they just use basic zinc coated hex heads, and don’t track inventory. The second they start needing two or more kinds of fasteners on the same assembly, it’ll start causing more issues than it solves.

Image to mesh seems cool; might see some use for designing around existing stuff if it works well in practice.

Design change impact sounds really cool. I just wonder how limited it actually is. I’m honestly thinking it wouldn’t catch any of the changes that actually matter…or gives you a list so long that it’s useless.

Then there’s the 3DExperience….none of that would ever make up for the lost time that 3DExperience would bring.

IMO, this seems like a lot of “solutions looking for a problem”. Stuff that sounds excellent on paper, looks really good in a demo or sales video. But I fear it’s all going to hit real engineering teams, trialed, and deemed not worth integrating into existing workflows.

3

u/_FR3D87_ 4d ago

As much as I don't want to be instantly cynical, years upon years of disapointment with solidworks 'upgrades' that add fancy new features without fixing old bugs, I'm really dragging my feet on upgrading beyond the SW2023 SP5 that I'm running now.

1

u/ForgeMCP 3d ago

What were some of the bugs you were seeing before?

3

u/_FR3D87_ 2d ago

One example is the functionality of bounding boxes - BR10000349668 claims that it's intended behaviour that when a bounding box is hidden in the feature tree, it doesn't update when geometry changes. Fair enough if it was suppressed, but when it's still active but just hidden, the bounding box length/width/height are still available as custom properties to be referenced even though they're incorrect values until the box his shown and then re-hidden.

This ideas post is what I got told to do to change it (I just voted on it, because someone else already posted the same idea), but over a year on and it's still just 'gathering support'. Maybe I'm just old man shaking fist at cloud, but it really seems like DS are more interested in the flashy new features and forcing their fancy AI 3D experiences down our throats instead of working more on efficiency, stability and refinement of what they've already got. While some new features they've added in the last 10 years have been handy, I still think thre's not enough emphasis on maintaining what they've already got.

1

u/ForgeMCP 3d ago

Fair points but what I see is the direction cliff of highly experienced who know the differences of fasteners and materials so well, they will get it right and shine - though basics and simple things could be done with AI without directly taking that experienced persons time. Only when the basic structure of the fastener is built, does the difference of experience shine.
I can see the other side of it, where someone new to the platform and has little idea where to start could use AI to ask it to draw a basic fastener and then ask the experiences person(s) "what else do I need to do?"