Future of CAD and Simulation

Jon Hirschtick founded SolidWorks in the 1990s, paving the way for 3D parametric CAD software designed to run on Windows-based personal computers. Previously, expensive Unix workstations were the primary platform for 3D CAD. Its availability on the more affordable and widely used Windows OS significantly broadened the 3D CAD market and user base.

The success of SolidWorks led to CAD and PLM giant Dassault Systèmes acquiring it in 1997. In 2011, Hirschtick left Dassault Systèmes. A year later, he founded Belmont Technology, which evolved into the browser-based design software maker Onshape. 

Once again, he and his development team proved what many had said at the time was impractical: to run 3D CAD in a browser. Similar to SolidWorks, Onshape found success and was eventually acquired by PTC. Today Hirschtick remains at PTC as chief evangelist.

AI Will Become Ubiquitous 

In a recent podcast episode (“The Era of AI-Powered CAD,” August 2025), Hirschtick predicted AI tools would soon become commonplace, like the internet. “Today you won’t call me up to talk about the internet on a podcast, but twenty years ago, you might have. Just like that, I think AI will soon become so ubiquitous that it won’t be special anymore,” he said.

Many mainstream design and simulation software developers are launching their own ChatGPT-like assistants and copilots with natural language support. Autodesk Fusion’s copilot and AnsysGPT are just two examples. 

Hirschtick said, “Since April 2025, Onshape users, everyone from student users to our highest level pro-plan owners, have access to the Onshape AI Advisor, embedded in everyone’s user interface. AI Advisor works like [chatbots], but it’s tuned specifically to CAD and PDM [product data management] tasks in Onshape. And it can be used to give help, to generate Onshape content, and to give advice on strategy as well.”

From Answering to Executing Tasks

In the earliest incarnation, the assistants are no more than automated programs that crawl through the software makers’ public tutorials, manuals, and community chat boards to find answers to the users’ questions. But they are expected to evolve and become much more sophisticated over time. 

In the recent Ansys Simulation World conference, Prith Banerjee, former chief technology officer of Ansys, current senior vice president of Simulation and Analysis Incubation Group at Synopsys, predicted, “Instead of answering your question, the copilot can actually do the settings. That’s where it is headed.”

Banerjee also believed AI agents would become much more personalized. Because of their ability to digest and analyze past designs, their advice could be tailored to your preferences and style. “[This advice is] based on hundreds of designs that you have done. So if you are a designer and you like a particular form of design, in the future, the copilot will be personalized to you,” he said.

Mechanical and Electrical Design Merge

In July 2025, EDA (electronic design automation) giant Synopsys acquired Ansys, pointing to continued consolidation among the major players in EDA and FEA (finite element analysis). Cadence’s acquisitions of Pointwise and NUMECA, both CFD (computational fluid dynamics) technology developers, and Siemens’ acquisition of Mentor Graphics are in the same category. In fact, before it was snatched up by Synopsys, Ansys also acquired a smaller EDA company, Ansoft, in 2008. 

“Now that I am at Synopsys, we’re working on agentic AI applied to all the EDA tools …, having these agents work with the designers to transform the way chips and systems are designed in the future,” said Banerjee.

Clues in Science Fiction

Hirschtick thinks Hollywood’s vision of AI-driven design, as exemplified by the fictional AI-powered J.A.R.V.I.S. in the movie “Iron Man,” is quite close to how engineers will use their software in the future. The AI in CAD would be “a companion, accelerator, collaborator,” he said. “You might say, ‘This surface doesn’t look right. Can you make it smoother?’ And most likely, the AI will give you several options ... But the AI tools won’t be replacing you, or your entire team.” 

In Onshape, the software can create design branches you can explore before you adopt some of the software-proposed edits and merge them with your original design. 

When AI tools become a standard feature of mainstream CAD programs, Hirschtick thinks developers will be pressured to find ways to distinguish themselves. “We’re going to see enormous differences in the quality of those tools, the speed at which they’re delivered and iterated, and the ability of the tools to work based on differences in the approaches of the CAD and particularly the PDM and collaboration tool,” he said.

With AI still evolving, Hirschtick recommended, “Your strategy has to incorporate the notion that AI is changing every day … We’re having this discussion because it’s not clear what’s around the next corner.” Reflecting on society’s anxiety with AI, Hirschtick said, “People were saying [that] the internet was going to eliminate schools, but it didn’t. Today, we’re on the brink of another exciting chapter.”

Note: This article includes portions previously published in other podcasts and conference reports.