CAD has always been sold as a canvas. You sketch, you extrude, you assemble. Out comes a drawing or a part file, and you move on.

But maybe that was always the wrong metaphor. CAD was never really a canvas. It was a ledger. A place where decisions got recorded, just not the ones that mattered most.

The geometry is there. The knowledge is not.

And that is the real design bottleneck. It is not the time it takes to model a fillet or generate a new configuration. It is the fact that every design review starts with the same detective work: What were we thinking last time?

The truth is, engineers are not just modelers. They are memory keepers. Except right now, that memory mostly lives in hallway conversations, chat threads, or in the brain of someone who has already left the company. Which is why the same mistakes get made twice. And why so much engineering time feels like reengineering.

AI is changing the metaphor. It is turning CAD from a ledger into a living journal. Not just recording geometry, but observing actions, capturing intent, and linking choices to context.

Think less “autopilot for sketches” and more “flight recorder for design.”

That is where the real opportunity lies.

The signals are already out there. Autodesk is embedding generative design into workflows. Dassault is baking intelligence into lifecycle twins. NVIDIA is wiring CAD into robotics loops. ABB added a copilot into RobotStudio.

These are not just add ons. They are early hints that CAD is shifting from drawing software to a knowledge system.

The AI future for engineering is not just about speed. It is about continuity. It is about opening a model and being greeted with memory, not silence.

That shift would change everything. Fewer debates about why a hole is where it is. Fewer hours lost to rediscovering tribal knowledge. More time spent on real design, less on archaeology.

Maybe the most powerful future for CAD is not about how fast we can draw, but about how much we can remember.

If you have read this far, welcome to the matrix.

Until the next glitch
Arjun