Examples

Ten jobs, each in three lines: the situation, what you type, and which part of CoPilot does the work. This is a menu rather than a tutorial — find the one that looks like your afternoon, then follow the link for the detail.

1. A first part, from a description

The situation. You want to see CoPilot build something you can check by hand.

Create a new part, make a 60 mm cube centred on the origin, add a 6 mm fillet to its vertical edges, and tell me the final volume

What happens. Each operation is reported as it completes, with the values actually used, and the reply ends with a measured volume — not an estimate. Predict the number first (a 60 mm cube is 216,000 mm³) and compare.

Uses: ordinary chat. See Part Modeling and Verifying Results.

2. The same edit across a folder of parts

The situation. Ninety parts in a folder, every hole needs to grow by 2 mm.

What you do. Do it once on one part with CoPilot, with the recorder running. Stop the recording, accept the offered parameters (the folder, the file pattern, the 2 mm), and save the macro. Then run it.

Start recording a macro

Run the "Enlarge holes in a folder" macro on C:\Projects\Frame with delta 2

What happens. One approval card naming what the run will change, one progress line, the CAD held for the duration so nothing interleaves. The run calls no AI model at all, so the ninetieth part costs what the first one did — which is nothing.

Uses: Macros. Also the single biggest way to cut your bill — see Spending fewer tokens.

3. A family of sizes from one master

The situation. The bracket ships in four widths, two of them without the mounting boss, one in steel.

Capture a variation template called "Bracket" from this part, including dimensions, feature suppression and material

What happens. You get a grid: one row per value that drives the design, one column per named instance. Fill in the four columns and press Generate. Each instance is written, read back, measured again at the end, and saved as its own file — and the master is restored and re-measured afterwards.

Uses: Variations.

4. Pointing at something instead of describing it

The situation. There is a wall in the middle of the model you are worried about, and naming it in words would take four attempts.

What you do. Open a markup board on a screenshot of the model, circle the wall in red, type “this wall” next to it, and Submit. Then:

Which face did I circle? Give me its area and how thick the wall is there.

What happens. The circle's centre becomes a point in the model, a ray goes out from where the camera was, and the first face it meets is the one you were looking at. You get a face, a centre, an area and a normal, with no coordinate typed by hand.

Uses: Markup Board. Works on SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, NX and Solid Edge; on AutoCAD you can mark up and discuss, but the face lookup is not available.

5. A part from a drawing, a PDF or a photo

The situation. A supplier sent a dimensioned PDF, or someone photographed a part on the bench.

Create a part from C:\refs\bracket.pdf and save it as C:\parts\bracket.sldprt

What happens. The sheet is read, the views are given their roles, and the shape is rebuilt as real features — an extrusion, a revolve, a sweep or a sheet-metal base with its flanges, depending on what the sheet shows — then verified against the volume the drawing implies.

A dimensioned drawing gives you millimetres; a photograph gives you proportions. From a photo the result is a proportional model, and it needs one real dimension from you before it means anything. Anything the reader cannot establish is refused by name rather than approximated.

Uses: the Part from Drawing/PDF/Image… command on your CAD's CoPilot ribbon, or the same request in chat. There is a matching Part from Mesh (STL/OBJ)… for scan and mesh files.

6. A drawing with the dimensions already on it

The situation. The part is finished and needs a drawing this afternoon.

Create an A3 drawing of this part with front, top, right and isometric views, dimension the overall width, height and depth, and add centre marks to every hole

What happens. Sheets, views, dimensions, notes, balloons and BOM tables are all real drawing objects, and each dimension's value is checked against the model rather than written as text.

Uses: Drawings & Dimensions. Write your house standard as a skill once and you stop restating it.

7. A bill of materials out of an assembly

The situation. Purchasing wants the BOM as a spreadsheet, today.

Export the BOM of this assembly to C:\reports\frame_bom.xlsx, with quantity, part number and description

Check this assembly for interferences and list them worst first

What happens. The BOM is read from the assembly and written as a real workbook. The interference check reports each clash it finds, component pair by component pair.

Uses: Assemblies. To do it every Monday at 6 a.m., see scheduled tasks.

8. A sheet-metal flat pattern and its DXF

The situation. The laser cutter needs a flat.

Show the flat pattern of this part, then export it as a DXF to C:\cut\panel.dxf

What is the bend allowance on each bend, and what does the flat measure overall?

What happens. The flat pattern is created or unsuppressed in the CAD system's own sheet-metal environment and exported from there, so the numbers are the CAD's, not a calculation done alongside it.

Uses: your CAD system's page — SOLIDWORKS, Inventor, NX, Solid Edge.

9. Asking whether the design is actually manufacturable

The situation. Before it goes out, you want the obvious problems caught.

Run a DFM analysis on this part for press-brake sheet metal in 2 mm mild steel, and save the report to C:\reports

What does our welding standard say about minimum fillet size on 6 mm plate?

What happens. The first runs a scored check against a rule corpus and reports each failed rule with its remedy and its source — and lists the facts it was missing rather than assuming them. The second searches the documents you have indexed and quotes them back.

Uses: the DFM analysis, and the Knowledge Base for your own standards.

10. When a step goes wrong

The situation. A feature landed in the wrong place, or an operation refused.

What you do. Read the refusal — it names the measurable reason, and usually contains exactly the number you need. Then give CoPilot a measurement rather than a complaint:

The volume reads 9,000 mm³ but a 40 × 30 × 10 block should be 12,000. Find what is missing.

Undo the last operation

Revert to the "before the shell" checkpoint

What happens. A checkpoint is a restorable copy of the document, so it survives things undo does not. Take one before any long or destructive sequence — it is one sentence and it saves the afternoon.

Uses: Chat Basics, When a Dialog Appears and Troubleshooting.

Which feature for which shape of job

If the job…	Reach for
is one-off and you can describe it	Ordinary chat
repeats with the same steps	A macro
is one document in several sizes	A variation template
varies, but your rules do not	A skill
needs an answer out of your own documents	The knowledge base
is easier to point at than to say	The markup board
starts from a drawing, photo or mesh	The Part from… ribbon commands
should happen at 6 a.m. on Tuesdays	A scheduled task