From 3D screens to AI co-pilots, here are some of the notable uses of artificial intelligence at Dassault Systèmes’ annual user conference.
AI was definitely the theme at Dassault Systèmes’ 3DExperience Conference 2026, held this week in Houston, Texas. Dassault announced a new collaboration with Nvidia, revealed a new AI assistant, and even showed off how Solidworks itself can be leveraged.
AI had an even bigger presence on the show floor. Exhibitors at 3DExperience World Playground were keen to showcase how they use AI, how they can help you use AI, or how AI tools can revolutionize work. We went from booth to booth to find the most interesting AI applications. Here we will introduce some of the most recommended ones.
Design for manufacturability using AI
Generative design developer InfinitForm was demoing a platform focused on creating manufacturable generative designs. We first reported on this company in 2024 when it secured a $2.5 million investment to launch.
Historically, generative design tools have had a reputation for being able to create optimized parts that are practically impossible to create using standard manufacturing processes that require complex and expensive 3D printing. InfinitForm generates easily machineable parts with the help of an AI assistant.
“The way our AI works is more like a co-pilot than an AI tool to help with optimization and FEA analysis. It’s all just math-based applications and algorithms,” said Adam Smith, director of business development at InfinitForm. h told Engineering.com. “Our AI is more about the knowledge base than how we help customers onboard. It’s AI as a pre-check before we run an optimization, and an optimization after the check.”
InfinitForm is currently integrated with Solidworks and Siemens NX, allowing users to export designs back to these CAD programs with machinable geometries. The company says integration with other CAD software is in the works.
Improving athlete performance by polishing skates
Dassault Systèmes consistently highlights numerous customer use cases both in the general sessions and on the playground floor at its annual conference. This year, they included pinball machines, toothbrushes, and hockey skate polishing company Sparx Hockey.
Sparks says more than 10 million skate sharpenings are performed each year on its sharpening machines designed and tested with Solidworks. The company’s next step is in the world of data. Sparks machines have been collecting performance data and sending it to the cloud for years. This year, the Sparks want to combine that data with player data being collected by Division I hockey and NHL teams.
“We’re going to start over the next year or two to understand how skating preparation impacts performance. We’re currently doing a lot of subjective testing with players going to the rink wearing different blades,” Sparks Hockey founder and CEO Russell Layton told Engineering.com. “The difference between the blades is so small that humans may not be able to feel it.”
Sparks will use artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand how different ways to sharpen skates affect everything from heart rate to breathing data to maximize athletes’ performance.
“Right now, we’re piping all of our data into the cloud, and using things like Power BI to graph and chart all this data and trends,” Layton says. “Can you find statistical differences in performance, acceleration, top speed, heart rate and stride rate over a specific distance?”
Collect high-quality data to train robots
Another 3DExperience user that received a lot of attention during the conference was bionic hand company Psyonic, which is developing a robotic hand that can be used by both humans and robots. More than 300 people are currently using the company’s bionic hand as a prosthetic arm, and more than 50 robotics companies are using it in their machines. One of those users is NASA, which Psyonic CEO Adeel Akhtar said he will visit while in Houston to see the hands of NASA’s bipedal robot Valkyrie.
Psyonic also works directly with Nvidia on large-scale data collection projects, which is Psyonic’s main connection to the world of AI. The force feedback that the company’s hands provide to humans is data that can be used to train robots to perform dexterous tasks.
As Akhtar recently said in a LinkedIn post, “This is what reality-to-reality transfer looks like: humans perform real tasks in the real world and show robots how to do it with the same hands and in the same way. The lack of high-quality operational data is one of the biggest challenges in robotics, and this collaboration aims to build on that foundation and improve dexterity for both humans and robots.”
This data is provided by a human who performs the task that the robot copies. Psyonic can collect data through a phone app that allows users to control a robotic hand by moving their hands in front of their phone’s camera. Attendees at 3DExperience World were able to try this out at Psyonic’s booth, and it worked very well. Although it does not recognize very fast movements, it can easily distinguish between finger and hand movements and command the robot hand to react quickly. We have received many compliments throughout the week.
For more information about Psyonic, see Let’s get Physical: New prosthetics restore people’s sense of touch.
Make your machining more intelligent
The HCL CAMWorks booth highlighted how AI can streamline machining processes. Bruce Wiener, technical services manager at CAMWorks, explained that CAM software allows the company to learn how to machine certain types of parts, taking into account things like geometry and material.
“For example, if you have a tapped hole of a certain size, you can teach the machine process for that type of hole,” Wiener told Engineering.com.
Wiener added that there may be other ways to extend machining intelligence. AI could enhance feature recognition, a long-standing product of CAMWorks, that could be tailored to the user’s preferences for how a part is broken down into specific machinable features. Ultimately, CAMWorks wants to help machine programmers by making their software more intelligent, providing answers and information without having to refer to help documentation.
Creating a new generation of 3D screens
When you walk past Beijing-based BOE’s booth, it’s easy to think they’re just showing animated centerpiece images on a screen. But if you stop for a moment in front of the display, its eyes suddenly pop out from the screen. BOE was showcasing a 16K resolution 3D display that doesn’t require glasses.
Related: 3D screens are back and professional
BOE’s monitors have built-in cameras that check your eyes as you approach the screen and send a different image to each eye to create a three-dimensional appearance. BOE used AI to train the camera and eye tracking. This isn’t a radical use of AI, but it creates a very effective 3D illusion.
Currently, the display only works for one user at a time, but Jade Li from BOE’s business development and product planning department said the company is developing a screen that can also work for multiple users at the same time.
BOE is targeting medical training and diagnostic applications for initial deployment (hence the eyeballs on the screen). The company came to 3DExperience World to explore the potential intersection of its technology and CAD.
“We’re talking about integrating the hardware with the Solidworks software, so designers can actually see what they’re designing in 3D format,” Li told Engineering.com. “We still have to figure it out, but it’s not that difficult.”
AI honorable mention
AI is so prominent in 3DExperience Playground that we didn’t get to know all about it in detail. There were many other organizations implementing AI in interesting ways. The ones worth mentioning are:
- Keysight, an electronics test and measurement company, showcased its Eggplant software, which uses AI to help automate test creation and execution. Keysight acquired Eggplant in 2020, bringing the company’s team under the Keysight umbrella. The software uses computer vision to directly “read” the screen, capturing information and running tests on different types of devices, browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions, and more.
- The education section of the playground had Texas A&M
‘s WIRED Underwater Robotics team, last year’s exhibit‘Creating an autonomous robot (the incredibly named Swim Shady). The student team uses the computer vision tool Roboflow to train a fully autonomous robot, and this year they also plan to incorporate a robotic arm into the robot. - Westwood Robotics brought their robots Themis and Bruce on display and waved to the crowd. On stage during the general session, CEO Xiaoguang Zhang highlighted the company’s “AI-enhanced humanoid OS, a modular stack that coordinates safe interactions with whole-body stability navigation and consistent motion,” and the robot’s ability to adapt with minimal data input.
This concludes 3DExperience World 2026. Next year’s User Conference will be heading to Nashville, Tennessee. We will be watching to see how these AI applications continue to evolve and develop over the coming year.
