Every question we are asked.

CADABRA is an AI CAD copilot that installs as a SOLIDWORKS add-in. You describe a change in plain English and CADABRA performs the real SOLIDWORKS feature operations: sketches edited, dimensions refit, parts rebuilt, drawings regenerated. It also produces production drawings and bills of materials on your own title blocks and standards.

An AI CAD copilot is an assistant that lives inside a CAD program and performs real CAD operations from natural-language prompts. Instead of clicking through menus, an engineer types what they want, for example “fillet all sharp edges 2 mm” or “generate a drawing with our title block”, and the copilot executes the feature operations, updates the model, and produces the deliverables.

CADABRA is built for mechanical engineers, product designers, hardware teams, job shops, and manufacturers who use SOLIDWORKS and want to spend less time on repetitive CAD work. Students use it to learn the workflow while finishing coursework faster.

CADABRA installs as a SOLIDWORKS add-in with a single installer. Close SOLIDWORKS, run the installer, enable the add-in, and CADABRA appears in the right-side task pane. There is no migration and no file conversion: it runs on your existing SOLIDWORKS license and your existing files.

Ask Mode is CADABRA’s read-only assistant. It answers questions about the open model, its geometry, dimensions, features, and materials, and it can search the web for component pricing, material properties, and manufacturing processes without leaving SOLIDWORKS. It makes no changes to your model.

Yes, on Professional and Enterprise. DFM review reads the solid bodies and reports the faces that fail draft, minimum radius, wall thickness and undercut thresholds, which you can set per run. It returns findings, not a score. Cost estimate prices material and machining for a milled or turned part from its mass properties and bounding box, and states its assumptions; where a driver cannot be read it withholds the total rather than guessing. Both are read-only, and neither is on Free, Student or Standard.

For fasteners, yes. CADABRA sizes one to the measured bore and takes it from a company part you name, then your SOLIDWORKS Toolbox, then a parametric screw it models, stopping at the first source that supplies one. It can also insert and mirror components you point it at. For anything else, Ask Mode can search the web for supplier and specification data, but nothing places a catalog part into your assembly for you.

No. CADABRA reaches its AI processing environment over the network, and CAD data is encrypted in transit. Model inference requires sending the prompt and the assembled model context, so there is no offline mode. If that rules CADABRA out for your work, contact us before you evaluate it.

You pick a level, not a model. There are 5: Low, Medium, High, Ultra and Max. One model sits behind each level, and the level you pick is the model that answers. CADABRA does not switch models part way through a task. Free has Low only, so no picker is shown. Student and Standard reach Low, Medium and High. Professional and Enterprise add Ultra. Your plan default is used until you pick another. The dashboard usage view shows which model handled each request.

Email team@cadabrai.com or use the contact form, on every plan including Free. We reply within one business day. Discord is the community channel, not a support queue. Enterprise adds a dedicated engineer. Service status for every part CADABRA depends on is at cadabrai.com/status.

Yes. CADABRA is an add-in, not a CAD system. You keep your existing SOLIDWORKS license, files, libraries, and PDM, and CADABRA works inside them.

You do. CADABRA performs real operations on your model and shows exactly what it changed, so every edit is reviewable in the feature tree. Revert deletes the features a run added. An in-place change such as a dimension value, and a feature the run deleted, are not taken back, and there is no file checkpoint, so save before a long run.

Text to CAD is turning a written description into real CAD geometry. A generic text-to-CAD tool produces a standalone mesh or a one-off solid. CADABRA does text to CAD inside SOLIDWORKS: the prompt resolves to native feature operations on the feature tree, so the result is a parametric, editable SOLIDWORKS body.

With CADABRA it is editable. Prompts are resolved into native SOLIDWORKS features such as extrudes, cuts, fillets, patterns, and Hole Wizard operations, so every result lands in the feature tree with its sketches and dimensions intact. You can roll back, edit a dimension, or change design intent exactly as you would on geometry you modeled by hand.

Concrete, dimensioned, engineering-language prompts work best. Examples: “make the wall 3 mm thicker”, “fillet all sharp edges on this face at 2 mm”, “add a 6 mm counterbored hole pattern on a 40 mm bolt circle”, “pattern this rib eight times around the axis”, “change the material to 6061-T6 and update the mass properties”. Vague prompts such as “make it better” do not resolve to a single operation.

Point CADABRA at a part or an assembly and ask for drawings. It places named, projected, section, isometric and flat-pattern views chosen from the geometry, imports model dimensions with hole callouts, adds center marks and centerlines, writes your title block from the model properties, and on assemblies inserts the BOM and balloons the sheet. Every output follows the drawing standard you configured.

Yes. Batch generation runs the whole assembly in a single pass, producing one sheet per unique component plus the assembly drawing, each on your title block with the scale chosen from the geometry.

Yes, once you have set a standard up. You upload drawings you have already released and CADABRA extracts your title block fields, projection angle, units, text height and standing notes from them. That standard is then applied to every drawing it generates.

Yes, as an assisted rebuild that you check. Open the drawing in SOLIDWORKS, or attach a picture of the print, and ask for the model. CADABRA reads the sheet, reconciles the projected views against each other, and builds a new part with a real feature tree. Nothing verifies the result against the print except the measured comparison CADABRA reports, so an engineer checks every dimension before it is used.

A saved SOLIDWORKS drawing is read directly when it is the open document. A PNG or JPG of a print is read as a picture, which is the route for a scan or a supplier print. DXF and DWG are imported instead as one unfiltered sketch in a new part, every layer and border line included, so they are geometry to build on rather than a rebuild. Do not attach the print as a PDF: a PDF is treated as a drawing-standard reference and is learned from instead of rebuilt.

Yes. Verify the dimensions that matter before anything downstream uses the part.

Yes. A single prompt such as “make a drawing of this part on our B-size title block with an isometric and a section through the bore” produces the drawing directly. Views, sheet, dimensions and your standard are handled in one pass rather than as separate manual steps.

BOMs, yes. Drawings Mode builds the bill of materials from the assembly structure and balloons the sheet to match it, using the column set and naming conventions in your drawing standard. There is no RFQ packaging feature; that is something teams still assemble from the drawings and BOM themselves.

Not in the way engineers mean by editing. An STL is a triangle mesh: it has no concept of a hole, an axis, a face, or a dimension, so there is nothing to change a value on. You can sculpt or re-mesh it, but you cannot set a bore to Ø12 or apply a tolerance. Parametric CAD carries features and dimensions.

STL is a mesh of triangles approximating a surface, used for 3D printing and rendering. STEP is exact boundary-representation geometry, used for manufacturing, inspection, and CAM. STEP carries the real shape; STL carries an approximation of it. Neither carries a feature history. A native part file does.

Most do not. A large share of the tools ranking for “AI CAD generator” and “AI technical drawing generator” are general image models: they return a picture that looks like a drawing, with no geometry, no dimensions you can measure, and no DWG, STEP, or PDF a supplier can quote from.

You write the change in plain English, naming the face or feature and the dimension. CADABRA resolves that against your open model and makes the edit; the model is rebuilt, and the result is checked.

No. Generative design produces shapes algorithmically from loads and constraints, usually organic and topology-optimized. Natural-language CAD performs the operations an engineer describes, in the order they describe them, on the model they already have.

Yes. CADABRA is an AI CAD copilot built for SOLIDWORKS. It installs as a SOLIDWORKS add-in, edits parts and assemblies from natural-language prompts through native feature operations, generates production drawings and bills of materials on your own standards, and answers questions about the open model. Pricing starts free, then $50/month for commercial use and $20/month for students.

Yes. Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is reporting that the file is new, not that it is harmful. SmartScreen grants a file a reputation only after enough people have downloaded it without trouble, so every fresh release starts out unrecognized. Choose Keep, then More info, then Run anyway. To confirm you have the real installer first, the download page prints the release SHA-256: run certutil -hashfile Cadabra.Bundle.exe SHA256 in Command Prompt and compare the two.

CADABRA diagnoses rebuild errors, mate failures, dangling sketch relations, and missing references in the context of your open model, and explains what to change. Because it can see the feature tree and the failing feature, the answer is specific to your file.

No PLM or PDM connector today. CADABRA works on the files you have open and the drawing standards you upload, and your PDM rules around those files keep applying. If a connector matters to your team, tell us which system.

Not yet. CADABRA runs today as a SOLIDWORKS add-in. Support for other CAD packages is in development and you can join the waitlist for the one you use.

Macros work for a fixed, repeated sequence: they break when the feature tree changes, they need a developer to maintain, and each new variation is a new script. CADABRA resolves intent against the actual model at run time, so one prompt covers cases that would otherwise need a separate macro each.

CADABRA answers a security questionnaire directly, against the controls in place today. Single sign-on and role-based access on Enterprise. Encrypted in transit. A second at-rest layer under a key held in a hardware-backed vault separate from the data, one setting on every plan. Indexed CAD content filtered to the account that wrote it. Only the context a given prompt needs is loaded at run time. A 90-day expiry on the operational logs CADABRA keeps about the service. Zero-retention handling on Enterprise, configured per organization.

CADABRA runs as an add-in on your workstation and reaches a hosted processing environment for inference. It does not run offline. Enterprise runs in a dedicated cloud tenancy under zero-retention handling, so prompts and model context are processed to answer the request and kept on no CADABRA server. Your vault is never uploaded wholesale: what leaves the workstation is the context a given prompt needs.

CAD content is encrypted in transit and at rest, under a key held in a hardware-backed vault separate from the data. Indexed content is filtered to the account that wrote it. CADABRA does not sell customer data. Enterprise adds single sign-on and zero-retention handling; on every other plan you can turn training off in dashboard settings.

By default on Free, Student, Standard and Professional, yes: the EULA and privacy policy state that CAD geometry, prompts, and metadata may be used to operate, maintain, and improve CADABRA and its AI models. You can stop it at any time with the data setting in your dashboard, which takes effect from the moment you turn it on rather than retroactively. On Enterprise, zero-retention handling is configured as part of the agreement.

Turn on the data setting in the dashboard under Preferences. It processes your designs, prompts, and files only to answer the request in front of it, keeps none of them on CADABRA’s servers, and excludes them from training. The trade-off is that it also turns off cloud chat history and cross-device recall, because both are stored data. It is included with every plan.

CADABRA has a free plan with no card required. Standard is $50/month for 5M credits a month and commercial use by one engineer. Professional is $120/month for 10M credits a month, DFM review, cost estimates and the Ultra and Max reasoning levels. Enterprise is custom priced and is the only plan with Drawings Mode, custom standards, SSO, zero-retention handling and a dedicated engineer. Every paid plan can be billed yearly at 10 times the monthly price. Students pay $20/month on the education plan at cadabrai.com/education.

Yes. The Free plan needs no card and carries 700K credits a month, Ask Mode against the open document, live web search, and Imagine Mode for rendered concepts. It does not change your model: building a concept, and every other edit, needs a paid plan.

Students with an academic address their institution issued, in a supported region. The plan is $20/month, carries 3.5M credits a month plus Plan, Agent and Debug Mode, and is licensed for non-commercial coursework. It is not offered in the EU, EEA, United Kingdom, or Switzerland; students there should use the Free plan or Standard. Not recognized? Email team@cadabrai.com and we will check it.

In credits, and every plan states its own monthly allowance: Free 700K, Student 3.5M, Standard 5M and Professional 10M. Usage is drawn down per completion, so an Ask Mode query costs very little while an Agent Mode operation or a drawing set costs more. The dashboard shows how much of the month you have used. Unused allowance does not roll over.

The turn is refused and the message names the date your allowance comes back. Nothing already built is rolled back, and a long run that stops part-way leaves every feature it finished. On a paid plan you can buy extra usage for the current period from the dashboard Billing page, which is a one-off charge that does not change your subscription. On Free the only way up is a plan change, and it takes effect immediately. A separate cap of 120 requests a minute is not the allowance and clears within a minute.

Yes, from account settings. A change takes effect immediately in both directions, and Stripe prorates the difference against the period you are already in.

Yes, on every paid plan, and it is what the pricing page shows by default. A year costs 10 times the monthly price, a 17% saving: Student is $200, Standard is $500 and Professional is $1,200. Switch between monthly and yearly from account settings, and Stripe prorates the change against the period you are already in. Until 30 September 2026, a student starting a year pays $150 for the first one instead of $200, then the standard price after that.

Visa, Mastercard, and American Express on every plan. Enterprise can also pay by ACH or wire and be billed annually on NET-30 terms.

No. An Enterprise demo needs a company address so we can route the request and confirm the organization.

Yes. Paid plans renew until you cancel, and you can cancel from the dashboard at any time on both monthly and yearly billing. Checkout and billing run through Stripe.

CADABRA performs CAD operations and produces deliverables; Aura is primarily a conversational assistant. CADABRA is configured with your own drawing standards rather than being generic, and it both modifies the model and produces the documentation from it.

It depends entirely on the work. The gains concentrate where the task is repetitive and well specified: generating drawings across an assembly, applying the same edit to a family of parts, and batch hole or fillet changes. On one-off modeling that needs judgment, expect little. The free plan exists so you can measure it on your own parts before paying.

Not directly. ChatGPT cannot open your part file, cannot see your feature tree, and cannot execute an operation in SOLIDWORKS. It can write code that might: a VBA macro, an OpenSCAD or CadQuery script, or a formula. You then run that code yourself and check what it did. A CAD-native copilot performs the operation in the open document instead, and can verify that the model rebuilt.

Drafting a SOLIDWORKS macro to start from, writing OpenSCAD or CadQuery for a parametric shape, working through a tolerance stack, explaining an unfamiliar error message, and drafting a DFM or drawing-review checklist. All of these are text tasks with a human checking the output. None of them require access to your model.

A SLDPRT or a STEP file describes boundary-representation geometry: surfaces, edges, and topology produced by a geometric kernel. It is not text, and reading it meaningfully requires a kernel to evaluate. Uploading one to a chat window does not give the model a kernel, so at best it reads metadata.

It removes the repetitive parts of CAD work, modifications, drawings, and BOMs, so projects ship faster and engineers spend their time on design. Teams also get consistency: the same standards applied to every drawing, by every engineer, on every revision.

CADABRA was founded by mechanical engineers with twelve years of hands-on SOLIDWORKS experience. The company is CADABRA AI Inc., headquartered in San Diego, California, and is part of NVIDIA Inception, Berkeley SkyDeck, the Siemens Technology Partner Program and the Onshape Startup Program.