Can AI be the Bright Light Guiding Product Development?

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly changing the way we live and work, and the manufacturing industry is no exception. AI is already at work behind the scenes in real-world industrial settings, improving product design, automating manufacturing processes, and optimizing still embattled, post-pandemic supply chains.

The potential applications of AI in manufacturing are indeed endless and its impact on product development and manufacturing will be disruptive.

SOLIDWORKS built its reputation by creating an easy-to-use CAD program that ran on Windows PCs. SOLIDWORKS CAD significantly disrupted the status quo of the time, which at the time consisted entirely of costly UNIX workstation-based solutions.

There was an easier and less expensive way of creating product designs, and millions of users have adopted SOLIDWORKS as a result. We are continuing his journey of helping our users by incorporating AI into our tools to deliver even greater efficiencies and foster greater levels of innovation.

SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform are at the forefront of this AI revolution. These tools are using AI to make it easier to design and manufacture products, and to optimize operations.

For example, SOLIDWORKS is using AI to automate the design process, helping engineers to create complex models faster and more easily. The Design Assistant in SOLIDWORKS, for example, learns the way you work and will offer suggestions on how to proceed based on your own, unique workflows.

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is using AI to optimize supply chains, helping manufacturers to get the right products to the right place at the right time.

AI is also being used to improve the quality of products. For example, SOLIDWORKS is using AI to analyze data from manufacturing processes to identify potential problems. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform is using AI to predict customer demand, helping manufacturers to avoid stock-outs and overproduction.

The future of manufacturing is bright, and AI is playing a key role in shaping that future. With SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, manufacturers can harness the power of AI to improve their products, processes, and operations.

Here are some specific examples of how AI is being used in product development:

  •          Design: AI is being used to automate the design process by helping engineers to create complex models faster and more easily. For example, AI is being used to generate design options, analyze data, and resolve potential problems.
  •          Manufacturing: By helping to automate manufacturing processes, AI can improve efficiencies.  AI can be used to analyze the data from the shop floor to monitor manufacturing machines and processes to predict and prevent costly/disruptive downtime.
  •          Supply chain: AI is also being utilized to optimize supply chains, helping to get the right products to the right place at the right time by predicting demand, managing inventory, and optimizing transportation of final products.
  •          Quality: AI is being used to improve the quality of products, helping to identify potential problems and defects, and to analyze data from manufacturing processes, inspect products, and identify defects. For example, AI is being used to automatically extract annotations from 2D PDFs to build a First Article Inspection report (FAI).
  •          Marketing/Sales: Quickly and easily leverage your own product data to create emotion-evoking marketing content. AI is being used to create photorealistic renderings using drastically less compute resources and in a fraction of the time.

The potential applications of AI in product development are endless. As AI continues to develop, it is likely that we will see even more innovative and transformative applications of AI in this industry.

Just as we did decades ago by disrupting the status quo of the CAD world, SOLIDWORKS will continue to stay on the forefront of technology so we can help our users to harness the power of AI and other disruptive technologies to improve not just design, but all aspects of their business.

Manish Kumar

From day dreaming designs at IIT, Delhi lecture halls to building his own furniture, this avid woodwork artist knows design like the back of his hand. In his more than two decades at SOLIDWORKS, Manish has led early development of translators, surfacing, modelling, sketcher, assembly, weldments, sheet metal, drawings, and more. In his current role as CEO, Manish spearheads the synergy between R&D and the brand’s vibrant community of users and helps in accelerating the adoption of the expanding SOLIDWORKS portfolio. As the Vice President of SOLIDWORKS R&D, he has played a key role in the development of SOLIDWORKS product and technology strategies.