The Future of Engineering Starts with Industrial AI: How CATIA Is Transforming Product Development

Engineering is entering a new era. As products become increasingly connected, software-defined and multidisciplinary, organizations must manage unprecedented complexity while accelerating innovation.

Industrial AI represents the next evolution of engineering—not simply by adding AI capabilities to existing tools, but by introducing a new way of working where humans and AI collaborate throughout the product lifecycle. With CATIA and the 3DEXPERIENCE AI-native agentic platform, Dassault Systèmes brings together Virtual Twins, Virtual Companions and Generative Experiences to assist product development teams in co-engineering the products of tomorrow. This new approach enables engineers to make better decisions, automate complex activities and innovate faster while ensuring quality, compliance and traceability.

From AI Assistance to AI Collaboration

Industrial AI is redefining the role of AI assistants.

CATIA introduces AI-powered Virtual Companions that not only answer questions, but also work alongside users. They understand engineering intent, reason using Industry World Models grounded in science and engineering knowledge, and execute tasks. As trusted experts, they help engineering teams reveal the invisible, solve complex industrial challenges and develop optimized products before any physical prototype exists.

Instead of replacing engineers, Virtual Companions enhance engineering capacity. They combine decades of industrial knowledge and know-how with natural interactions and intelligent reasoning.

Meet the Virtual Companions

The CATIA’s Industrial AI strategy relies on specialized Virtual Companions that support engineers throughout product development.

• LEO acts as a mechanical engineering expert, helping users understand existing designs, navigate complex product structures, manage engineering knowledge and accelerate design modifications.
• AURA empowers teams by making enterprise knowledge and know-how easier to discover, reuse and apply across projects.

Each of them can be enriched with competencies, sets of skills, that engineers can use to co-develop products and address industrial challenges more quickly and efficiently. Our Virtual Companions employ structured industry knowledge and know-how to interpret user intent, reason in an industrial context, make decisions, and ultimately generate outcomes based on in scientific principles and industry-accurate reality.

This is the foundation of a novel form of collaboration: one where humans and Virtual Companions co-create and cooperate safely at scale on engineering challenges.

Generative Experiences: Turning Engineering Knowledge into Action

Complementing Virtual Companions, CATIA introduces Generative Experiences that automate engineering processes while maintaining enterprise standards and design quality.

These AI-powered capabilities help engineers in several ways:

• Generating editable mechanical parts from multimodal inputs.
• Predicting mechanical interfaces and automatically creating assemblies.
• Generating engineering rules directly within the design process.
• Transforming engineering documents into structured system models.
• Capturing and reusing engineering knowledge through standardized templates.

Generative Experiences integrate industrial knowledge directly into engineering workflows, reducing repetitive tasks and enabling faster, more consistent collaboration across teams.

Engineering on a Shared Virtual Twin

Industrial AI becomes significantly more powerful in the context of Virtual Twins. By bringing together modeling, systems engineering and simulation on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, CATIA enables engineers to evaluate alternatives earlier, validate decisions continuously and improve product quality before creating physical prototypes.

This shared Virtual Twin environment provides the trusted context that allows AI to reason, recommend actions and orchestrate engineering activities across disciplines, resulting in a more connected and resilient development process.

Accelerating Innovation Through Industrial AI

Engineering organizations face increasing pressure to deliver more innovative products in less time.

CATIA addresses this challenge by combining AI-powered automation with engineering governance. Engineers can generate designs, reuse engineering knowledge, improve requirements traceability and maintain compliance while keeping full control over critical engineering decisions.

Industrial AI enhances engineering capacity, enabling engineers to concentrate their expertise where it provides the most value.

The Future of Engineering Is Human + AI

CATIA introduces a new collaborative working model where engineers are supported by AI-powered Virtual Companions, Generative Experiences and Virtual Twins on the 3DEXPERIENCE AI-native agentic platform.

As engineering complexity continues to grow, organizations that successfully combine human creativity with Industrial AI will be better equipped to innovate faster, protect their engineering knowledge and deliver the next generation of products.

FAQ

• What is Industrial AI in CATIA?

Industrial AI combines artificial intelligence with engineering knowledge, Industry World Models and Virtual Twin technology to assist engineers reasoning, automating activities and solving complex engineering challenges throughout the product development process.

• What are CATIA Virtual Companions?

Virtual Companions are trusted, AI-powered experts that collaborate with engineers, understanding engineering intent, reasoning with industrial knowledge and executing tasks. LEO focuses on engineering activities, while AURA helps teams leverage enterprise knowledge and know-how.

• What are Generative Experiences?

Generative Experiences are AI-powered capabilities that automate engineering processes such as part generation, assembly creation, engineering rule generation and requirements modeling while ensuring quality and compliance.

• How does Industrial AI improve engineering productivity?

Industrial AI expands engineering work capacity by automating repetitive activities, accelerating knowledge reuse and enabling engineers to focus on higher-value design and innovation tasks.

• Why are Virtual Twins essential for Industrial AI?

Virtual Twins provide the engineering context that enables Virtual Companions and Generative Experiences to reason, orchestrate actions and support informed decision-making throughout the product lifecycle.

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