[Houston, United States=DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] "Beyond a tool, it will build a factory of future knowledge and know-how."

Manish Kumar (마니쉬 쿠마르), CEO who leads Dassault Systemes' SolidWorks 3D CAD unit, summarised the identity shift driven by AI in those words.

Until now, SolidWorks has been a tool that lets users design through clicks and drawing. Going forward, it will become infrastructure in which AI provides results when users say what they need, based on accumulated knowledge and know-how, he explained.

Kumar again stressed at 3DExperience World 2026, an annual conference that Dassault Systemes is holding for SolidWorks users from Feb. 1 to 4 local time, that "SolidWorks is preparing for an era in which users implement designs through conversation based on accumulated knowledge and know-how, beyond a simple 'tool'."

He also cited Virtual Companion as a keyword for reshaping SolidWorks around AI. Virtual Companion is Dassault Systemes' AI brand for supporting design work, focused on delivering an experience at the level of a companion beyond a simple AI chatbot.

Dassault Systemes' Virtual Companion currently comprises Aura, Leo and Marie. Each has its own role and supports designers in strengthening their capabilities through collaborative players.

According to Kumar, Aura specialises in discovering and exploring ideas. It connects internal data with external knowledge on the web to help users flesh out design-related ideas. Leo is an engineer-like AI that reviews manufacturability and design realism and presents structures suitable for actual production. Marie focuses on science-based analysis and also covers high-difficulty areas such as drop tests, ergonomics assessments and medical device regulatory compliance.

Dassault Systemes released Aura in beta at last year's 3DExperience World event, and at this year's event it also unveiled preview versions of Leo and Marie. Leo and Marie are scheduled for official release in the first half of the year.

Kumar also ran several demonstrations at the event of the specific experiences Virtual Companion provides. With only the request "Make a steel structure to support a water tank," it completed a complex steel-frame structure and simulation. He also showed generating a mesh from a single image and automatically converting an existing 3D model into a parametric structure so users can edit it directly. He highlighted that users can diagnose assembly performance issues automatically and receive optimisation suggestions, or change materials for each part in a batch, through conversation alone. Users no longer need to memorise complex commands, he said, and can simply say, "Change these parts to aluminium."

AI can also be applied beyond design to hands-on processes such as project management, approving change requests and linking with ERP and MES systems. If a user says, "Approve this change request," AI can generate related documents and automatically send them to a supervisor, Kumar said. It is also possible to check project risks or whether schedules are slipping in a conversational way.

Kumar said, "SolidWorks implements these AI functions to fit user context. It enables responses by analysing various information such as the file currently open, user permissions and past work history, and supports text, voice and sketch inputs. Users can call AI from various points such as inside the app, dashboards and menus."

Data trust and security are also keywords Kumar repeatedly emphasised in relation to Virtual Companion. He said, "The SolidWorks AI model is trained on internally generated data and synthetic data. If customers want, they can build a dedicated model using their own data, and that model is never shared externally. This blocks the risk of data leakage between companies."