Founder Jon Hirschtick explains that the upcoming AI chatbot is just phase one for PTC’s cloud CAD platform.
AI is coming to Onshape, PTC’s cloud CAD platform.
While some engineering software developers have been showing off AI research and making big AI promises, Onshape has been quietly plugging away on more conventional updates—like the brand new CAM Studio.
But behind the scenes, the Onshape team is as keen on AI as everyone else. In an interview with Onshape founder and PTC chief evangelist Jon Hirschtick, Engineering.com learned that Onshape has been testing several AI features and is nearly ready to release the first: AI Advisor.
“We’re very close,” Hirschtick said. “You can see the lights on the runway.”
Here’s what we know about Onshape AI Advisor, who will have access to it and what other AI features it may herald.
What is Onshape AI Advisor?
Onshape AI Advisor is a product support chatbot. It was announced in September 2024 as a detail in a PTC press release about a strategic collaboration agreement with cloud computing provider AWS. At the time, PTC expected to release AI Advisor by the end of 2024.
“While designing, users will be able to type a question in simple, conversational language and the Onshape AI Advisor will respond with an answer or recommendation based on the resource library and provide links to additional information,” read PTC’s announcement.
Related: Applying AI in manufacturing: Q&A with Jon Hirschtick.
AI Advisor is powered by Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s service for building generative AI applications. Bedrock offers access to a variety of foundation models from AI developers including Anthropic, Meta, Mistral AI and more.
In our interview, Hirschtick confirmed that AI Advisor is built on a commercial foundation model, but declined to name which. Regardless, he emphasized that the Onshape team has tuned it for their userbase, and that every output will cite sources and provide external links.
“We’re giving much better results than you get if you ask these same questions to ChatGPT, or Perplexity, or Copilot, or Claude, or DeepSeek,” Hirschtick said.
What kind of questions can you ask Onshape AI Advisor?
Hirschtick gave some examples of how users could interact with the new AI assistant.
“How would I create a curvature continuous boundary surface in Onshape?” one user might ask.
“What features would you recommend for modelling a remote control?” another may inquire.
These are questions a user could look up in the documentation, Hirschtick admits, but “so are half the things we ask each other.” Even experienced Onshape users may not know about all the features of the oft-updated software. AI Advisor is a way to help users discover and learn new ways to design in Onshape.
It may debut as a product support chatbot, but Hirschtick says that’s just phase one for AI Advisor. In the future, users will be able to ask tailored questions and get more practical output. Hirschtick gave a few more examples.
“Can you give me ideas on how to improve the performance of this model?” asks a user, who is then shown some possible solutions.
“Write a conditional operator in Onshape that says if the trailer width is less than 28 the value should be 4, if not, the value should be 5,” prompts another, and AI Advisor gives the expression in Onshape’s variable syntax.
“The first application will just be expert advice on how to use Onshape with cited sources,” Hirschtick summarized. “Future applications may involve generating expressions, maybe someday generating API calls. It could even someday modify your model, whether it’s with text-to-CAD or other[wise].”
AI Advisor for all (for now)
We couldn’t confirm the release date for AI Advisor, but we did learn which users will have access to Onshape’s upcoming AI feature.
First, the good news: Onshape AI Advisor will launch to all Onshape subscribers, including free and educational users. That wasn’t a given—the new Onshape CAM Studio, for instance, is only available to Onshape Professional and Enterprise subscribers, plus there’s an extension called CAM Studio Advanced that will cost extra for everyone.
The chatbot’s availability may change, however. Hirschtick speculated that as AI Advisor matures and expands, some of its capabilities may be segmented by subscription tier. Time will tell, but it will probably side with Hirschtick. Given the computing cost of generative AI and the business model of SaaS, it’d be surprising if PTC kept AI Advisor free forever.
Expect more AI from Onshape—someday
The soon-to-be-released AI Advisor is just the first step Onshape will take with AI. Hirschtick said the development team is actively exploring other AI features, including AI-based rendering and generative text-to-CAD.
Onshape users shouldn’t get too excited about these tools just yet. When it comes to AI, Onshape prefers patience to flash.
“We could ship tomorrow if we wanted something that’s a demo,” Hirschtick said. “The hard part is turning these into tools that pros value in pro-level use cases. And we’re working on it.”
