SolidWorks 2026 AI features: AURA, LEO, and whether any of it works

I spent about five years in SolidWorks before moving to Fusion 360, and in that time I developed a deep fondness for the software and a deeper fondness for complaining about it. So when Dassault announced that SolidWorks 2026 would ship with AI companions named AURA and LEO, my first reaction was that the software I once used to fight with manually was now going to generate new ways to disappoint me automatically. My second reaction was that I should probably install it and find out.

SolidWorks 2026 FD01 dropped in February 2026. I've been using it, specifically the AI features, for about six weeks. Long enough to form opinions. Short enough that I'm sure some of those opinions will age poorly. Here's where things stand.

AURA and LEO: the branding#

Before we get to what the AI actually does, we need to talk about the names, because Dassault has made a whole thing of it.

AURA and LEO are not separate products. They're not separate AI models. They're personas layered on top of the same underlying intelligence system, differentiated by personality and approach. AURA is the creative one, focused on "what if" questions. LEO is the practical one, focused on "how to" execution. In theory, the system automatically switches between personas based on what you're asking. In practice, I mostly noticed that the chat responses sometimes had slightly different tones and I couldn't always tell which persona was talking.

Dassault describes AURA as "highly agreeable" and focused on exploring possibilities. LEO is "assertive" and focused on manufacturability and feasibility. Both are available in SolidWorks 2026 FD01 through the SolidWorks Labs (Beta) tab.

I understand why they did this. Giving the AI a name and a personality makes it feel like a colleague rather than a chatbot. The engineering press ate it up. I'm less charmed. An AI that gives you bad geometry with an assertive personality is not better than an AI that gives you bad geometry with no personality. The character sheet doesn't change the topology.

That said, the features themselves are real, and some of them are worth your time. Let me go through them.

Assembly Structure Designer#

This is the feature that got the most attention at the SolidWorks announcement, and it's the one that comes closest to text-to-CAD territory, at least in concept.

Assembly Structure Designer lets you describe an assembly in natural language and have LEO generate the full structure: top-level assembly, sub-assemblies, individual parts, all organized in a hierarchy. You type something like "battle bot with a spinning drum, a chassis, two drive motors, and a wedge scoop" and it creates the folder structure, names the files, and sets up the assembly tree.

It does not generate the geometry. I need to repeat that because the name is misleading. Assembly Structure Designer creates empty parts and assemblies organized in a hierarchy. It's project scaffolding, not design. You still have to model every single part yourself. What it saves you is the initial file setup: creating the assembly file, creating empty part files, naming things, organizing the structure.

For small projects, this saves maybe ten minutes. For a large assembly with dozens of sub-assemblies and hundreds of parts, the time savings could be meaningful if the AI gets the structure right. In my testing, the generated structures were reasonable for simple products and became progressively less useful as complexity increased. It organized a camera tripod structure sensibly. It made odd choices about sub-assembly grouping for a more complex mechanical assembly, putting things together that I would have kept separate.

It shipped in beta with FD01. It works. It's useful for kickstarting project setup. It's not what people imagine when they hear "AI-generated assemblies."

AI-powered drawing creation#

This one surprised me by being more useful than expected. SolidWorks 2026 can generate drawings from your 3D models using AI-assisted automation. You set your drawing template, your standards (ASME, ISO, etc.), and your primary views, then the AI generates a drawing with appropriate views, dimensions, and annotations.

I tested it on a moderately complex part, a housing with pockets, holes, and threaded features. The generated drawing was about 70% of the way to what I'd produce manually. The views were reasonable. The dimension placement was mostly logical, though it had the familiar problem of putting dimensions where they technically work but not where I'd want them for readability.

The preview-and-refine workflow is nice. You get a preview, adjust the layout, and then generate the final drawing. It's faster than starting from scratch, especially for simple parts where the standard views tell most of the story. For complex drawings with GD&T and custom annotations, you'll spend time cleaning up. But "starting from 70% instead of zero" is a genuine time savings on routine parts.

This shipped in beta. I've used it on real parts. It works. It's not magic, but it's useful.

What's Wrong analysis#

"What's Wrong" is an AI feature that analyzes a failed feature tree and tries to tell you why it failed and how to fix it. If you've spent any time in SolidWorks, you've stared at a red feature with no clear error message and wondered what you did to offend the software. What's Wrong is Dassault's attempt at making that diagnosis faster.

In practice, the analysis is hit-or-miss. For obvious failures, like a sketch that lost its reference or a fillet that can't be applied to an edge that no longer exists, What's Wrong correctly identifies the root cause and suggests a fix. The suggestion is usually accurate enough to be helpful, especially for less experienced users who might not immediately know why a feature turned red.

For more complex failures, the kind where a rebuild error cascades through eight features and the actual problem is three operations back in the tree, What's Wrong sometimes identifies the right root cause and sometimes points you at a symptom rather than the disease. I had one case where a patterned feature failed because of a sketch constraint issue six features earlier, and What's Wrong told me the pattern was the problem. Technically true. Not the fix I needed.

Still, having any diagnostic tool is better than having none, and for the common failure modes that frustrate new users, it works well enough. Shipped in beta.

Design Inspection#

Design Inspection lets you query your model using natural language. "What's the total mass?" "How many parts in this assembly?" "What material is this body?" "What's the volume of this part?" Instead of navigating to the mass properties dialog or clicking through the material editor, you just ask.

It's not exciting. It's just convenient. I used it mostly during design reviews when someone asked a quick question and I didn't want to click through three dialogs to answer it. "What's the wall thickness here?" is faster to type than to measure, assuming the AI interprets "here" correctly, which it does about 80% of the time.

Material Manager#

The AI-enhanced Material Manager lets you assign and manage materials conversationally. "Change this part to 316L stainless steel." "Assign aluminum 7075-T6 to all parts in this sub-assembly."

It works the way you'd expect. Useful when you're doing material studies and want to swap materials across multiple parts quickly. Not transformative.

What's still coming#

Dassault has announced additional AI features for later in 2026:

Project Planner: AI-enhanced project planning with design task breakdowns. Status: announced, not shipped.

Additional LEO competencies in sheet metal, simulation, and surfacing. Status: announced as future updates.

Most features target general availability by mid-2026. SolidWorks delivers five major releases per year, so the feature set will evolve.

How it compares to Fusion 360's AI#

The natural comparison is with Fusion 360's AI features, since Autodesk and Dassault are making similar bets on AI in different CAD platforms.

Fusion 360's Autodesk Assistant handles similar tasks: natural language command execution, design queries, material assignment. Fusion also has the announced-but-not-shipping Neural CAD for text-to-geometry generation, which SolidWorks doesn't have an equivalent for. On the other hand, SolidWorks' automated drawing generation is more developed than anything Fusion currently offers for drawing automation.

Both are in beta/preview. Both are useful for simple tasks and unreliable for complex ones. SolidWorks' automated drawing generation is more developed than anything Fusion currently offers for drawing automation. The main difference is the personality theater: Dassault gave their AI names and backstories, Autodesk called theirs "Assistant." I prefer the honesty of calling it what it is.

The gap between naming and shipping#

My biggest criticism of SolidWorks 2026's AI features isn't the technology. It's the packaging. Giving the AI personas names and personality descriptions creates an expectation that the system is more capable than it is. When Dassault says LEO "prioritizes feasibility and manufacturability," that implies the AI understands manufacturing in a deep way. It doesn't. It generates assembly structures and answers queries about mass properties. Useful capabilities. Not "manufacturing intelligence."

The honest scorecard#

Assembly Structure Designer: useful for project setup, doesn't generate geometry. Beta, shipping.

AI-powered drawing creation: the most practically useful AI feature. Saves real time on routine drawings. Beta, shipping.

What's Wrong analysis: helpful for simple failures, inconsistent for complex ones. Beta, shipping.

Design Inspection: convenient for quick queries. Works. Beta, shipping.

Material Manager: minor convenience. Works. Beta, shipping.

AURA and LEO personas: marketing. The underlying AI doesn't change based on which name it's using.

SolidWorks 2026 has more AI than SolidWorks 2025, and some of it is genuinely useful. The drawing automation alone justifies updating if you produce a lot of routine drawings. The Assembly Structure Designer is a nice time saver for project kickoffs. The rest is convenience features that slightly reduce friction without changing the fundamental workflow.

If you're hoping that AURA and LEO will make SolidWorks feel like having a senior engineer looking over your shoulder, lower those expectations. They'll make it feel like having a command-line assistant who's read the help files and can sometimes save you a click. That's less exciting than the marketing video, but it's real, and real is what counts when you're trying to get a drawing out the door on a Friday afternoon.