by Gary Mintchell | Jan 28, 2026 | Design, Productivity, Standards
I appreciate press releases about AI that include definite use cases rather than just the usual vague “we’ve got AI.” InfinitForm is a company new to me. It uses the popular Co-Pilot form of AI for its Generative Engineering Platform.
InfinitForm launched its Generative Engineering Platform, the next stage in the evolution of Design for Manufacturing (DFM). The Generative Engineering Platform is powered by the InfinitForm AI Co-Pilot to automate DFM analysis while optimizing for manufacturing processes, freeing engineers to focus on innovation rather than design iterations and reducing design cycles by 60-80%.
Speaking from past harsh experience as a manager of product development, anything reducing engineering and design time getting us into manufacturing more quickly is a win.
The Generative Engineering Platform is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that integrates with computer-aided design (CAD) workflows and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize design for manufacturability. The Platform fosters a manufacturing-first approach that extends generative design beyond additive-only optimization, providing engineers and designers with automated analysis and intelligence tools to bridge the gap between design and production.
Much of the PLM, CAD, and similar technologies on the cutting edge have moved into a variety of cloud-enabled applications. This fits the trend.
The Generative Engineering Platform automates design while optimizing for manufacturing processes, including CNC (computer numeric control) machining, die casting, injection molding, extrusion, additive, and hybrid manufacturing. Automated analysis accounts for multiple manufacturability variables, including wall thickness, draft angles, tool accessibility, tolerance stack-up, assembly complexity, and tooling feasibility. The Platform also analyzes the cost of manufacture and provides first-pass yield predictions.
The InfinitForm AI Co-Pilot amplifies rather than replaces engineering expertise to accelerate decision-making, freeing design engineers to focus on innovation rather than manufacturability trade-offs. Using AI, the Generative Engineering Platform enables design engineers to explore more concepts with confidence that the results will be manufacturable.
The Platform also reduces the time required for handoffs to manufacturing engineers from weeks to days. Manufacturing engineers gain early visibility into design decisions that could affect manufacturing, eliminating surprises and reducing time-to-production. Using AI to ensure manufacturability also delivers a higher first-pass manufacturing yield.
The Generative Engineering Platform also features a Privacy-First Architecture to protect intellectual property. Customer designs are never used to train Platform algorithms, so proprietary data is always protected.
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by Gary Mintchell | Jan 13, 2026 | Design, Marketing
I downloaded Apple’s latest operating systems OS26, iOS26, iPadOS26 with the famous redesigns.
After hearing so much about their development and betas, turns out that they are, well, OK. Not good. Not better. Not that bad. Just different. I think different just to be different.
The first third of my career involved roles in product development. These were mostly consumer products. I learned about looking for things to change in products in order to provide a better customer experience.
Oh, and also how to describe those changes to marketing—hoping they would stick to the facts and not overhype the changes.
I suspect that was Apple’s downfall with the changes. They tried so hard to explain all the great changes with explanations about how they worked. Don’t believe it. Mostly it was change because someone in management thought it was time for a change. The animations are cutesy without any real value or meaning. The new icons fail to add visual understanding. After I learn them, they will be lost in familiarity and—just OK.
Reminds me of a magazine publishing company where I worked. They changed the font and color of the company name and added a funky logo. Since these were not self-explanatory (which they should have been), they sent a three-page memo explaining all the changes. You know, what the color symbolized, what the logo represented (since it was hardly intuitive).
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by Gary Mintchell | Dec 16, 2025 | Design, Software
I delve into the world of Product Lifecycle Management, CAD, CAM, Product Data Management, and the like a few times a year. A few supplier companies have invited me to their user group conferences over the past few years. A recent interview was with the new CEO of a cloud-based PLM product who also talked extensively about the coming expanded use of Artificial Intelligence or AI.
So many press releases come my way touting AI that I wonder if it’s only a marketing term. How much is real…and how much is hype?
One thought leads to another, and I wound up on a Microsoft Teams meeting with two people from PTC. Not unlike other companies, PTC discovered it would be much better to acquire a cloud-native company than to try to reinvent the wheel. Enter Onshape.
Last week Darren Henry, SVP Onshape General Operations and Cody Armstrong, Sr. Director Onshape AI Innovation discussed the benefits of cloud-based software (something I’ve written about for years) and how AI is far more than marketing hype. I offered Cody that challenge, and he stood up to that challenge. This is a longer than average post for me, but it was a longer than average conversation 🙂
I’ve had conversations with people from PTC, but there has never been one with Onshape. So, Darren provided an overview. Like I mentioned, I don’t need to be sold on the benefits of cloud-based software for manufacturing. It allows enhanced version management, change tracking, and scaling.
He offered the example of a company sending drawings to selected suppliers in order to obtain quotes. When you send the file, well, they have the file. Can you trust what they will do with your proprietary intellectual property? If you allow sessions on the cloud platform with restricted permissions, then you have more control over the process. Of course, the winning bidder will use the latest approved drawings for building the parts or fabricating. And everything is traced.
Switching over to Cody, whose task was to convince me that AI is real, a useful tool for designers.
“But the first thing that would point out is AI-powered design assistance. We call it AI Advisor. We believe it’s an industry leader. It’s available to millions of users today and the reception has really been fantastic.”
It’s a Large Language Model trained not on the world at large but on the company’s own database and standards. So, like LLMs you may be using now, he adds, “You can ask questions inside of Onshape about how to use Onshape and it will give you a tailored answer to that response. And that answer is much more accurate than what you would get with ChatGPT or any other traditional LLM.
“We’ve built our own layer on top of it that augments that data with our own learning materials, essentially defines it as a source of truth. And so we believe this is the new way that people will learn to use Onshape. And over time, you know this will become more and more.”
Another benefit of AI Advisor is training. “One of the things that that we’ve often found with parametric CAD in general is that it’s very difficult to learn, very difficult to use for a new user. Even if you have experience with a CAD system, learning a new CAD system is difficult. And so what we really set out to solve with the AI Advisor is the ability to quickly answer a user’s question, especially as they’re learning.”
From here, we got into previews of coming attractions.
Another cool use of LLMs comes from language ability. “Another big benefit of A I is we get localization and translation as a tool of the LLM. And many of these localized LLMS support many different languages. We can support those languages as a byproduct of that. So we’re really excited about being able to answer questions in any language, including languages that our product doesn’t even support.”
The next cool tool is FeatureScript. Cody continued, “The next topic that I wanted to bring up is FeatureScript autocomplete. FeatureScript is a language that that we’ve developed for building CAD geometry. It’s very like JavaScript like. You build custom features. They allow you to take all these tedious tasks and turn it into a single feature. It just allows you a quick, easy way to create a feature that’s tailored to you.”
A side benefit—it enables an average design engineer to do software development, which accelerates development.
Search has been around for decades, but it doesn’t seem to be getting better overall. Cody discussed Onshape’s coming use of AI-powered search. “We will initially launch this hopefully in the Public Space. They have a library of of millions of models that are publicly available that users have created using Onshape. We want to allow users to quickly find information in that giant list of documents. We think A I is really well suited for that.”
The AI-powered rendering engine is cool. As Cody explained, “This is a topic I think a lot of people will really appreciate. Rendering can somewhat be a tedious, time consuming task. It can often take 30 minutes to an hour to generate a good rendering of an object in CAD.”
The process begins with the CAD model. You incorporate the background and realistic materials. We can generate professional grade renderings with nothing but a simple prompt, right? And using the latest generation A I image generation models, we can really get amazing results in seconds as opposed to 30 minutes or an hour in more complicated. We call it AI quick render because you can go from a model to a rendered image in a background that looks good in seconds, right?
The last thing I’ll mention, and the furthest down the road for development, concerns AI Agents. They consider agents as simply part of the team. I recently attended a conference where the speaker mentioned a future release containing Model Context Protocol (MCP). The “influencer” sitting beside me almost gave me a bruise on my thigh hitting me with abundant excitement.
Well, Onshape is working on their MCP application.
“So it becomes a tool for productivity that the company can benefit from. But importantly, our architecture will allow for this,” Cody explained.
“It will allow us to say this is a company specific agent with specific permissions that only certain users can access. We we scope that in a very narrow way. It’s a toolkit for other companies to build Agentic workflows into your software. So if you’re a company using Onshape, and maybe you want to build your own agents, we want to allow and enable that. This will allow companies to build their own agents and set their own definitions and communicate with Onshape through MCP interaction.”
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by Gary Mintchell | Jun 6, 2024 | Design, Generative AI, News
My last post concerned using new technologies for specification development. Extending use cases of technology into other realms of administrative work, this release from Galorath announces their new product, SEERai, an advanced chat-based generative artificial intelligence (AI) built specifically to assist digital engineers and engineering professionals plan and estimate projects. (Something else I could have gladly used in my earlier career.)
Use cases for this GenerativeAI technology include information technology (IT), software, hardware, manufacturing, aerospace, military, space, and more.
SEER enables businesses to streamline cost and cost estimation and project planning with real-time insights into cost drivers, risk factors, and the potential impact of hundreds of project variables. With SEER, digital engineers are empowered with industry-leading methodologies in digital engineering and keen, unprecedented insight into actionable data. With the availability of SEERai, cost estimation professionals have easy, generative access to Galorath’s proprietary knowledge base assembled and validated over its forty-year legacy, allowing users to engage in chat-based strategic conversations with SEERai and gain action-oriented insights for their projects and initiatives.
SEERai is built upon the existing industry-leading capabilities of the SEER Cost Estimation Platform.
SEER’s features include:
- Predictive Analytics: Accurately forecast project costs, schedules, and potential risks.
- Machine Learning Algorithms: Improves predictions over time as project data is shared and easily adapts to new information and changing conditions.
- Data-Driven Decision Making: Provides insights into cost drivers, risk factors, and the impact of different variables on project outcomes to make informed decisions.
- Risk Analysis and Mitigation: Evaluates the probability/impact of various risk factors on a project, identifying potential issues before they occur and developing mitigation strategies, and planning for program uncertainty.
- Customization and Scalability: Adapts to projects of different sizes and complexities across various industries with a high degree of AI algorithm customization and scalability.
- Integration with Existing Systems: Integrates seamlessly with other project management and engineering software tools to facilitate the exchange of data and enhance analysis.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 5, 2024 | Design, News
There exist many varieties of software platforms. Schneider Electric has introduced a new one on me—a “Specification Development Process” platform. I can think of many times in my career I could have used a tool such as this.
In brief:
- Industry’s first platform for Specifiers that provides complete, up-to-date information to increase accuracy for architectural, engineering, and construction specifications
- Developed in partnership with RIB Software, next-generation platform provides new levels of simplicity, transparency, and version control for modern design and engineering firms
- Intuitive, cloud-based workspace to easily manage project specifications, track progress, and seamlessly download data
- SpecLive Collaborate platform provides real time collaboration with Schneider Electric Experts and access to up-to-date specification content to increase accuracy and manage version control.
Schneider Electric launched SpecLive Collaborate May 22, 2024, a first-of-its-kind platform, to modernize and streamline product specification and content integration for professionals. SpecLive Collaborate provides specifiers and engineers with a simple, streamlined experience for evaluating Schneider Electric’s cutting-edge solutions. This platform keeps essential technical product data intact by providing real time access to cloud-hosted specification content, reducing coordination gaps for the duration of the specification process. By improving upon static document-based processes, SpecLive Collaborate empowers teams with a shared, cloud-based workspace to develop more accurate specifications more collaboratively and more efficiently.
SpecLive Collaborate is part of Schneider Electric’s Specifier toolkit, made available via the MySchneider portal and your local consulting application engineers to provide users with the information to easily generate accurate and comprehensive specifications. SpecLive Collaborate does not require new workflows, and if the specifier has questions about a product or other information in the tool, they can request help directly through the platform.
by Gary Mintchell | Jun 4, 2024 | Design, News
The IT world has many technologies called “ops” today. Simr, formerly called UberCloud, unveils “SimOps” hoping to “revolutionize product development by accelerating computer-based simulations. It also announced $20M in Series A funding from BMW i Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital.
Simr gives engineers a single platform for using any compute resources with any leading simulation tool. The company is closely partnered with leading simulation platform providers including Ansys, Siemens, and Dassault Systèmes.
With the close of the new funding, Salil Deshpande, General Partner at Uncorrelated Ventures, and Baris Guzel, Partner at BMW i Ventures, join Ali Kutay, CEO and Chairman of Striim, and Roland Manger, Co-founder and Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, on the Simr board of directors.
Benefits:
- Increased Product Innovation and Reduced Time-to-Market: Utilizing cloud HPC enables engineers to work with large models and detailed simulations that would be too complex and time-consuming for standard workstations. This leads to the rapid development of more accurate and effective designs, increasing innovation and helping speed the delivery of products to market.
- Uninterrupted Productivity: Simr ensures a no-compromise user experience by enabling engineers to use any and all of their existing simulation platforms and workflows – including those from Ansys, Dassault, and Siemens – without any additional onboarding or configuration. This eliminates reskilling and ensures that productivity is not only uninterrupted but accelerated.
- Unmatched Security: The Simr platform’s implementation in the customer’s own cloud account enables IT teams to keep all proprietary data behind their corporate firewall – under their complete and exclusive control – while maintaining direct access to their cloud provider’s full range of security and compliance mechanisms.
- Increased Cost-Efficiency: Unlike consumption-based pricing models, Simr’s fixed, per-user pricing promotes simulation use by enabling customers to maintain direct relationships with the engineering software vendors and cloud providers of their choice. This enables them to leverage their own negotiated pricing and enables these resources to be accessed on an as-needed basis.
